Ditto that. I don't think anyone could really like Windows more then OSX. I think people could be more *used* to Windows (I know I am), but actually prefer it? That's just weird.
I run a dual-boot MacBook Pro these days, and I only venture into Windows when I have to or when I want to play games. And I'm finding more OSX games all the time, so that happens less and less.
I know that Slashdot is full of trolls, but my questions were actually straight-forward and honest. I was just curious to hear more about the evidence.
The book recomendation is especially useful. I will add it to my list of books to read. In my case, adding it to the list means I'll probably actually read it in the next couple of months.
The anecdotal evidence I find less compelling, but it does match up with the studies that I have also heard about in passing.
My "damning evidence" is that you can't get a double-blind study involving porno approved because ethics boards won't let you show porn to the participants because of how bad the psychological impacts of the porn is on those viewers.
Here's the quote: "I found fascinating, for example, that a number of double-blind studies of the effects of pornography were completed over twenty years ago, but that the results were so damning that it has been difficult to follow up on them. The effect of dirty movies on the people who look at them were so profound that ethics boards at universities deny researchers the approval to show them to human subjects." It's from a review of Pamela Paul's book "Pornified" that was posted here on slashdot on September 6, 2006. Here's the link: http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl$sid=05/09/06/ 1615234
I guess I stated that rather weakly, then. Okay, lets say 90% of men on/. (meaning 89% of slashdot), look at, and have porn. How many of them, in the real world, confronted seriously, would show diminished treatment towards women? How much of this perceived diminished treatment, too, is cultural and has nothing to do with porn? Again, if you are so influenced by media there is a deeper problem, you have a shaky self to begin with. Quick tangential question, do you think violent games/movies translates into violence?
I don't think it's a question of whether or not you stated it weakly. The problem is that your argument relies on empirical evidence that is not available to either one of us. I've made a claim that pornography has a negative psychological impact on people who view it routinely. You're countering, as far as I can tell, with an argument that tons of people on Slashdot (almost everybody) views porn and they have not shown any ill effect.
While neither of us have any evidence on that point (as far I know), I think that the anecdotal evidence is not in your favor. We all know how routine the jokes are that Slashdotters don't have lives, don't talk to girls, etc. Techies in general stereotypically watch more porn and have far worse social skills. I certainly don't think this, in itself, is damning evidence against porn. But if you were going to insist on using Slashdot users as a model of the impact of porn on people, I don't think the results look great.
I think that in general you are looking for some kind of belligerence. You use rape as a possible example of the impact of watching porn, and you also ask about violence and video games. I don't really think that porn (other than child porn) would necessarily lead to mysogony as a general result. That's not the type of effect I'm looking for. I think that it would lead more towards dysfunction. To an inability to emotionally and intellectually engage women as readily as someone who is unaccustomed to seeing them as sex objects on such a regular basis. This (more benign) dysfunctional result is more plausible, in my opinion, and also more warranted by casual observation of the Slashdot crowd. I do not imagine pornography as some kind of pernicious effect that turns men into women-haters, but more as a kind of pathetic addiction that reduces their ability to function with women on a healthy, non-sexual level.
I don't mean to overly downplay the link between pornography and sexual violence. I certainly believe that such a link is possible. Even casual internet searching will find evidence for and against this controversial claim:
In 1986, four areas with a concentration of sexually oriented business were studied in Austin, Texas. Sexually related crimes were found to be between 177% to 482% higher than the city's average. In tracing 81 license plates at sexually oriented business, 44% were from outside Austin.
A 1979 study in Phoenix, Arizona, found that neighborhoods with a pornography business experienced 40% more property crime and 500% more sexual offense than similar neighborhoods without a pornography outlet.
The problem with this research is that it's extremely difficult to sort out causation and correlation. Another problem is that it's entirely possible that the violent reaction of some people to porn is dependent on initial character (e.g. it might exacerbate pre-existing conidtions as opposed to creating them ex nhilo). A final problem is that rates of sexual crime per capita are relatively low. It's far easier, in my opinion, to look at the mundane effects of porn than the more dramatic ones.
The APA might not approve it for several reasons, their ethics policy is rather restrictive or things most of us wouldn't actually take as unethical, so that isn't really damning. To be honest, I've never heard of a lack of em
I think we were looking for something a bit more specific than "various studies". If you accept "various studies" as evidence, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
At this point, you are drawing a distinction between "label tags" and "html/xml tags". Two different things. We'll call "label tags" A and "html/xml tags" B.
In the context of me writing a post called: "labels make more sense". So clearly the idea: "what should we call these things" is already in play? Then, in a response to my post, someone notes the technical definition (incorrectly, as it turns out). So I simply point out that even if they are right about the technical term, why should we use that term when another term is better understood? This makes sense in the context of the question "what should we call these things" which was the context for this discussion, since the thread was branching off my reply to that effect.
It's not that I don't see what you are saying. I do. But you have this stubborn insistence at looking at A and B and refusing to acknowledge that the entire A/B discussion took place in the immediate contet of a question about what we should call the things.
My friend, it's not you being pedantic. It's you using a straw man argument. I don't think you mean to, but you did. You see, you quote me as saying "it's true" when the phrase doesn't appear in what I wrote. There's no better example of a straw man than putting words in quotes that didn't exist in the original material. While I'm at it, I also didn't use the word evidence (although you didn't put that in quotes). The words I used were "anecdotal" and "seems".
I never claimed anything was proven, true, or evidenctiary. I just offered a subjective observation as such. There's nothing fallacious in that.
Nor have I heard any confusion between porn and actual sex, they are rather hard to confuse, after all.
If you'd read more posts, you would have. Here's one sample just from this thread: "It's not just men that like porn... PEOPLE LIKE SEX" Notice that? It's not just men that like porn, PEOPLE LIKE SEX" That's a blatant substitution of porn and sex, and I didn't have to look far to find it.
I don't think porn is really a "article of faith", I haven't heard anyone seriously proselytise porn, its more a running joke, like how many/.ers REALLY live in their mother's basement?
It's an article of faith in that you're really not supposed to question it, not in that somebody is proselyting it. The Southern Baptist convention doesn't proselyte creation to each other, and Slashdotters don't proselyte porn to each other for the same version: it's assumed you already have a collection and enjoy watching it. If you want to see what I'm talking about, just wait until someone questions it and see the reaction. Again - just read these responses.
In any case, there are several examples of fallacious reasoning in your own post:
1. Though, we must realize that porn has been around as long as men, and society still hasn't ended.
So have STDs. So has murder. So has theft. Need I go on? Prevelence, even universality, has nothing to do with the moral or pragmatic worth of something. The connection is utterly fallacious.
2. The average porn viewer is probably not a rapist, or in any other way abnormal... Porn is not a cause.
The average smoker also doesn't have lung cancer. The idea that because it's more likely not to exhibit a reaction to a stimulus that therefore the stimulus doesn't lead to any consequence is ludicrious. I would simply turn your attention back to the fact, so far uncontested by you, that in the eyes of the american psychological establishment the effects of pornography are so negative that you can't get a controlled human study approved. That's pretty damning evidence, in my opinion. Furthermore, I never mentioned rape or in any way indicated that rape would be a consequence of watching porn. Why should it be? I'm thinking more about psychological harm as in problems with emotional intimicay, self-image, the way we treat women, etc.
No, on Slashdot, there is a depraved vocal minority that wants to feel like they are okay objectifying women in selfish, addictive, and animal-like ways.
I'm sorry, but the minority is definitely those Slashdot users who don't have teh pronzorz on their computer. It's not a vocal minority that looks porn - it's practically every IT user in existence. There are only a handful of tech-savy individuals who, for any reason, don't like porn. They are out there, however.
As far as your characterization of porn, I find it more or less dead-on. Of course everyone on Slashdot thinks there's no difference between having sex and watching sex (see other replies). I have to wonder how much of that has to do with the fact that they watch too much porn and don't actually have sex very often? Sour grapes, perhaps? Or just inexperience? Because I can say that I quite enjoy having sex, even though I don't watch pron.
I'm not a Baptist; I'm just getting tired of the stereotype that techies are perverts and that if you belong to that *club* that makes porn acceptable.
Pron is not just "acceptable". It's an article of faith. You can get into a lot of trouble for questioning pron. That's kind of what my sig is all about.
What happened to the techie that had a sister or a mother or a cute little daughter and wanted to protect them from exploitation?
Pron isn't exploitation, it's a "career choice" (quoted from another reply). Personally I've noticed two things. First of all, the most promiscuos people I know also have the lowest self-esteem. Correlation or causation - I don't know, but it certainly seems as though there's a definite negative connection between pron and mental/emotional/psychological health. Anecdotal, I know, but there it is.
Secondly, we already know that pron is also both addictive and psychological dangerous to the watcher. So much so, that you can't get any studies approved to have people watch pron. For some reason, no one seems to think seriously about what that means. It's like smoking for your brain. Some smokers live to be 100 and die skydiving, but the general connection between smoking and lung-cancer is indisputable, and anyone that tried to do research by asking non-smokers to smoke would be laughed out of their job.
So yeah, welcome to the decided minority of techies who are opposed to pron.
-stormin (for the record, I'm also against creationism)
Why is Google using inconsistent terminology in its products for such an important term?
Well, since we were talking about this from the perspective of Google terminology for use in consumer apps (e.g. GMail) I thought the objective would clearly be to make it understandable to the masses. We're not talking about job security here, we're talking about convincing people to use GMail. This is marketing, not development. In other we don't care if it works, we care how it sounds.
Why on earth would we revert to an obscure technical term rather than a common vernacular term when the objective is to make something easily understood to the masses?
It makes more sense to call them "labels" because the word "tag" generally refers to html/xml tags. Since you can use these tags (although you don't have to) to create the label type of tags, it's especially confusing.
In any case, it's closer to plain English to call them labels. That's what you're doing. If I'm in GMail and I want to indicate that an email is work related it is closer to plain English to say that I labelled it work than to say that I tagged it work.
As far as the science goes, I certainly agree. But have you actually watched many of the episodes in order, starting with the real pilot? I saw the show on TV several times and thought it was weird. The dialog seemed hokey, the character interactions forced, etc. It was only after watching the pilot first that I started to realize the problem was that Firefly relies extremely heavily on on continuity. It's not really very episodic. The characters do quite a bit of growing and changing throughout the episodes, and their relationships even more so.
I don't know if that would strike you as "soap opera", but it struck me as a good art. The characters are well-drawn, well-directed, and well-played (with the possible exception of inara, but she wasn't too bad).
If you haven't tried a few episodes from the pilot, give it a shot. I think you'll be impressed.
I've spent this entire time clarifying and sharing my own ideas while waiting for you to do the same. I'm not sure what justifies your respone that I haven't "allowed" you to clarify your ideas. I'm certainly not controlling what you type, and every post has been an opportunity missed to do precisely what you say you want to do: explain yourself.
You've gone from one incorrect assumption of what I believe to another (that I hate uniquenes, that I don't understand that how many political viewpoints there are, etc.) Every time you've assumed something of me that is not true I haven't gotten offended, I've merely expressed what I do, in fact, believe. I hear in your posts what you took away from my posts, and I correct where I think you've assumed incorrectly. In this way the conversation (on my side) has moved from you calling me someone who hates uniqueness to you calling me an arrogant prick where, alas, it is stalled.
I'm not really interested in responding to your personal attacks on me. If you want to believe I'm an arrogant prick be my guest. I'm more interested in ideas. I'm more interested in the conversation than what you think of me personally. You've never met me, you probably never will, and so why should I care? What I do care about is having good, honest, earnest discussion. Arrogant or not, I believe I've been sincere in everything I've written so far. I have no interest in "winning". It's not about competition in that sense. It's about competition in the sense that challenging each others presumptions forces us to think clearly.
As long as you insist on retreating into smug superiority
It is a real rseponse, when you're an arrogant prick. And when it serves a useful purpose. Discover the purpose.
And yet, here you are. Just as I knew you'd be.
Yes, yes, you're going to respond with the "but you've only been attacking me" bit. Go ahead...
instead of open and honest dialog - even with an arrogant prick - there's not much for me to see. The irony is that despite your repeated insistence that I'm arrogant, it's you who refuses to condescend to the level of actually discussing issues with me and you who rejects my arguments without actually addressing them. This doesn't hurt my feelings, but it does illustrate that you've no interest in the kind of meeting of minds that makes me enjoy adversarial posting. I do not for a second believe you've nothing to tell me. I believe that you, like all thinking creatures, certainly have thoughts and ideas worth hearing. Since you've consistently demonstrated no interest in communication, however, it's probably time for me to pack it in.
what exactly was your point with stating scifi fans can't 'tell the difference' between weird sequelish titles and other weird titles, though?
Sorry if I wasn't more clear. It wasn't the titles. Have you read any of the Star Wars/Star Trek franchise books? Some of them are excellent, but the vast majority are utterly horrible. Despite this, they get read with gusto because they afford sci-fi fans one more chance to immerse themselves in their favorite alternate worlds. They exemplify the way sci-fi desperation for more of what they love ends up degrading the worlds they treasure. Because publishers have learned sci-fi fans will read literally anything with "Star Wars" in the title, there's no incentive to find really good authors.
As far as Serenity goes, you'll notice I singled out Firefly, and not Serenity. I think Serenity was better wasn't a bad movie, but it probably should have gone straight to DVD as well as SG1 for pretty much the same reason. (For the record, I'm not a fan of Joss Wheddon either personally or artistically. I loved Firefly - and you should try out the whole series, but I've never been able to get into Buffy or Angel.)
A lot of other movies are bad as well. I agree. But as a sci-fi fan I have a special interest in sci-fi. It's a much more tight-knit genre than, say, spy movies. Most movie genres like romantic comedy, military action, tenn comedy, don't really have a following of any kind. Sci-fi, on the other hand, has a tradition and a history (in literature if not really in film). I'd just like to see sci-fi on screen start to live up to some of the promise of sci-fi on paper.
Yes, true. And that number and the nature of those viewpoints is far more and far more subtle than you will ever comprehend. Only an arrogant prick would believe that they understand them all and can thus categorize them. It's a sign of laziness too. Stereotype and you don't need to think too hard anymore.
You like to call me things (e.g. "arrogant prick") and then waste no time in doing exactly what you accuse me of doing. I suppose the difference is that in my case it's just arrogance, and in your case it's the truth.
In any case I'm well aware of the fact that I will probably never understand completely a single persons potlical viewpoints - including my own. This fact is not in dispute. Not by me, anyway. But your position makes no sense. We have to choose a level of granularity if we want to have a discussion (as I demonstrated in my last post). At a very low resolution, I look like a libertarian. At an extremely high resolution, the very concept of a "libertarian" is lost in the incredibly diverse minutia that various individuals (all grouped as libertarians at the low-resolution level) all maintain. At a high enough resolution, there are as many political viewpoints as there are human beings. If we employ your strategy of "ensure complete understanding" than we'll never get beyond the understanding point. That may sound rosy and fine, but if you wait for complete understanding before you act you'll never do anything. Imagine refusing to breathe until you completely understood the entire respiratory system, not to mention the atmosphere. Obviously "complete understanding" of any real-world phenomena quickly descends into an infinite regress.
We're humans. We exist as finite beings in an infinite world. That means we always act, by definition, without complete understanding. If we accept this fact, we can try to mitigate the ramifications. If we pretend it's not true, if we insist on seeking complete understanding before we act, we end up as paralyzed hypocrites because even in seeking to understand we are acting without understanding. Seek to understand, by all means, but also understand that you must continue to act in the mean time.
So it's not about laziness. It's about being pragmatic. Groups are useful things. I can say "men on average are taller than women" and, depending on the situation, I've said either something that's useful and true, or something that's useless and true.
If we were to follow your apparent credo of never generalizing about individuals ever all human conversation about politics would be impossible.
So I say again: it's all about granularity. I grouped you with left-wing democrats at a low-resolution. Either I was wrong, even at my very general resolution, or I was right but the level of resolution was inappropriate to the discussion (or both, I suppose).
Like I said: arrogant prick.
I suppose that's a substitute for a real rseponse?
There's always more than the words in the post. Don't bore me with the "all I can know is what you're written" argument. Ask before you argue.
This is silly. The only practical way to ascertain that I understood correctly what you wrote is to say it back to you. I have no way of knowing, a priori, what questions to ask. Sure, sometimes there's an obvious question, but asking questions is a bad filter to find miscommunications. A better filter is to go ahead with what you understood from the words, and allow the other person to correct you. On top of that, debate is inherently adversarial. This doesn't mean there has to be anger, but there does have to be opposition, just as there is opposition in a friendly game of ultimate frisbee.
I guess you're just not used to my level of competitiveness. In the future, however, you'd be better served to act a bit more thick-skinned and try to ascertain what the other person is thinking. Once you realize that that was part of what I was doing in my post, I think you'll realize I'm not quite the big jerk you think I am. If someone mischaracterizes you - or in any way offends you - you'd be better served to see if it was intentional or not first, and take offense second.
I was referring to the RIAAs practice of suing everyone and their grandmother without regard to the evidence, literally. This is another element of the wack-a-mole strategy. I thought my reference to the RIAA by name, among other things, would have made this obvious.
It was my understanding these were gonna be straight to dvd
I really, fervently hope so. Whatever it takes to keep these "films" (and I use the term loosely) away from mainstream cinemas. As if we need to give studios one more reason to demonstrate that sci-fi fans will watch anything, no matter how cheesey. This in turns removes any incentive to make good sci-fi, which further contributes to the (accurate) stereotype that sci-fi and art generally don't belong in the same sentence, which further drives the mainstream away from these releases, which further drains the funding available to make decent sci-fi (e.g. "Children of Men"), which further contributes to (you guessed it) Stargate. Yay.
I'm not just trying to troll. I love sci-fi. But I can't stand the fact that a lot of sci-fi fans can't tell the difference, for example, between "Star Wars: Roque Squadron 11", "Star Trek: Book #3423", and "Dune". The same thing happens in movies, and the result? Wing Commander. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0131646/)
Because sci-fi fans are willing to accept any old slop with aliens and lasers we get to watch "Stargate" instead of something with quality (like "Firefly"). I've tried more times than I can count to get into Stargate, but it has essentially the same production values as "Hercules" and "Xena: The Warrior Princess". It's enough to make an old-school sci-fi fan cry.
This is a story we've heard before with other sites, only serving to further demonstrate that playing wack a mole with torrent aggregators isn't the solution to anything.
I wholeheartedly agree that, from the perspective of the **AA, playing wack-a-mole isn't a good solution. But as an observer it's pretty funny.
More seriously, I think it is providing a long term solution, just not the one the **AA want. As these stories grow they continue to be seen as the greedy bullies they truly are. The main purpose of the RIAA and MPAA these days is to do the dirty work for the actual labels/studios and absorb the backlash. People get mad at the RIAA, not Sony. Or so the strategy goes. As anti-RIAA and anti-MPAA sentiment grows in severity and spreads into the mainstream, there will start to be bleedthrough to the actual labels and studios.
So basically the wack-a-mole strategy is the best education we could hope for that IP laws are a disgrace, that greed is the real motivator of DRM, and that DRM does nothing but create a nuisance for the consumer without effectively harming pirates. I want more and more of your average Joes to hear about stuff like this and start asking "What is with these guys anyway?" The answers will lead to some sensible IP reform.
It's a long-term goal, and I realize that in the meantime a lot of innocent people are having their lives ruined, but I think that tactics like this go a long way towards the final solution for DRM.
And, what, it's your job to crush folks feelings of uniqueness? It's your duty to destroy their sense of political self? Make them realize that, yes, in fact they are part of the hive, and no different from everyone else?
You've proven yourself to be exactly what you despise: unique. A uniquely sick fucker, but unique nonetheless.
Wow - melodrama much? The difference between you and I is that i take it as a given that people are unique. It's not something we need to reinforce. It's right up there with "and humans are bipedal". Honestly, chill. Despite that fact that people are unique, generalizations also apply to an extent. There are only but so many political viewpoints to be had. The major political philosphies in America now are what - liberals, conservatives, communists, anarchists, libertarians? 5? Say it's 10 for kicks and giggles, and you still obviously can group people together in large, generalized groups. Of course within the groups there are differences, but the finer the distinctions you make, the less they matter to everyone else. I'm more or less a libertarian. So I have a lot in common with other libertarians. I'm also pro-life, however, which is not a very libertarian position. So if we're talking big picture I'd be happy for someone to be like "you, as a libertarian,..." I would see no need to specify the subtle disctinctions between myself and other libertarians unless/until it became an issue. Unlike you, being grouped or classified in itself doens't threaten or intimidate my sense of individuality. I don't need strangers on Slashdot to re-affirm that I'm really a precious unique snowflake. On the other hand, if we were talking about abortion and you said "you, as a libertarian..." I'd have to specify the ways in which, on this issue, I'm not really like other libertarians. But again, it's silly to take it all so personally and dive into such deep melodrama.
I've never argued that you're not unique, just made fun of you for having such a desperate need to have it reaffirmed by strangers in a political discussion. I guess that's not very nice, but I'm still having a hard time believing that any rational adult posting about politics would really consider their individuality something they need to prove or demonstrate to strangers. If I really believed you were that vulnerable, I'd never have bothered arguing with you in the first place, let alone making fun of you.
Nope, you did so based on what you read. If you don't know the difference you can give up now.
Oh very, very clever. And continuing the melodrama. Let me phrase it this way: I did it based on the words in the post. As far as the difference between "what you wrote" and "what I read" that's just a difference between intention and interpretation. There's no point - none whatsoever - in my trying to guess what goes on in your head other than by reading and interpreting the words you have written. I've given my interpretation, my explanation of the interpretation, and afforded you every opportunity to engage me and explain why my interpretation was flawed. I'm completely open to seeing in your words something other than what I interpreted. I'd be happy to have you elucidate what you meant. That's what we call communication.
You have, however, so far failed to do anything other than tell me there's no point in arguing with me (before trying) and insist that if I don't see things you way I "can give up now". The very picture of maturity.
BTW, the contents of your posts are irrelevant.
No wonder it doesn't feel like I'm communicating. Clearly all that's relevant to you is the establishment of your own individuality. I suggest you get to the point where you no longer feel that your uniqueness is threatened by strangers and then try to have a discussion on Slashdot. You're bringing a lot of unnecessary baggage to the table and looking in all the wrong places of positive affirmation of your uniqueness. Isn't there a support group or something you could join?
Slashdot Mirror
Ditto that. I don't think anyone could really like Windows more then OSX. I think people could be more *used* to Windows (I know I am), but actually prefer it? That's just weird.
I run a dual-boot MacBook Pro these days, and I only venture into Windows when I have to or when I want to play games. And I'm finding more OSX games all the time, so that happens less and less.
-stormin
I know that Slashdot is full of trolls, but my questions were actually straight-forward and honest. I was just curious to hear more about the evidence.
The book recomendation is especially useful. I will add it to my list of books to read. In my case, adding it to the list means I'll probably actually read it in the next couple of months.
The anecdotal evidence I find less compelling, but it does match up with the studies that I have also heard about in passing.
Cheers, and thanks for the response.
-stormin
My "damning evidence" is that you can't get a double-blind study involving porno approved because ethics boards won't let you show porn to the participants because of how bad the psychological impacts of the porn is on those viewers.
/ 1615234
Here's the quote: "I found fascinating, for example, that a number of double-blind studies of the effects of pornography were completed over twenty years ago, but that the results were so damning that it has been difficult to follow up on them. The effect of dirty movies on the people who look at them were so profound that ethics boards at universities deny researchers the approval to show them to human subjects." It's from a review of Pamela Paul's book "Pornified" that was posted here on slashdot on September 6, 2006. Here's the link: http://books.slashdot.org/article.pl$sid=05/09/06
-stormin
I guess I stated that rather weakly, then. Okay, lets say 90% of men on /. (meaning 89% of slashdot), look at, and have porn. How many of them, in the real world, confronted seriously, would show diminished treatment towards women? How much of this perceived diminished treatment, too, is cultural and has nothing to do with porn? Again, if you are so influenced by media there is a deeper problem, you have a shaky self to begin with. Quick tangential question, do you think violent games/movies translates into violence?
I don't think it's a question of whether or not you stated it weakly. The problem is that your argument relies on empirical evidence that is not available to either one of us. I've made a claim that pornography has a negative psychological impact on people who view it routinely. You're countering, as far as I can tell, with an argument that tons of people on Slashdot (almost everybody) views porn and they have not shown any ill effect.
While neither of us have any evidence on that point (as far I know), I think that the anecdotal evidence is not in your favor. We all know how routine the jokes are that Slashdotters don't have lives, don't talk to girls, etc. Techies in general stereotypically watch more porn and have far worse social skills. I certainly don't think this, in itself, is damning evidence against porn. But if you were going to insist on using Slashdot users as a model of the impact of porn on people, I don't think the results look great.
I think that in general you are looking for some kind of belligerence. You use rape as a possible example of the impact of watching porn, and you also ask about violence and video games. I don't really think that porn (other than child porn) would necessarily lead to mysogony as a general result. That's not the type of effect I'm looking for. I think that it would lead more towards dysfunction. To an inability to emotionally and intellectually engage women as readily as someone who is unaccustomed to seeing them as sex objects on such a regular basis. This (more benign) dysfunctional result is more plausible, in my opinion, and also more warranted by casual observation of the Slashdot crowd. I do not imagine pornography as some kind of pernicious effect that turns men into women-haters, but more as a kind of pathetic addiction that reduces their ability to function with women on a healthy, non-sexual level.
I don't mean to overly downplay the link between pornography and sexual violence. I certainly believe that such a link is possible. Even casual internet searching will find evidence for and against this controversial claim:
In 1986, four areas with a concentration of sexually oriented business were studied in Austin, Texas. Sexually related crimes were found to be between 177% to 482% higher than the city's average. In tracing 81 license plates at sexually oriented business, 44% were from outside Austin.
A 1979 study in Phoenix, Arizona, found that neighborhoods with a pornography business experienced 40% more property crime and 500% more sexual offense than similar neighborhoods without a pornography outlet.
http://www.afec.org/issues/pornography/facts.htm
The problem with this research is that it's extremely difficult to sort out causation and correlation. Another problem is that it's entirely possible that the violent reaction of some people to porn is dependent on initial character (e.g. it might exacerbate pre-existing conidtions as opposed to creating them ex nhilo). A final problem is that rates of sexual crime per capita are relatively low. It's far easier, in my opinion, to look at the mundane effects of porn than the more dramatic ones.
The APA might not approve it for several reasons, their ethics policy is rather restrictive or things most of us wouldn't actually take as unethical, so that isn't really damning. To be honest, I've never heard of a lack of em
I think we were looking for something a bit more specific than "various studies". If you accept "various studies" as evidence, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
-stormin
My wife (reading over my shoulder) wants to know (and I quote): "Where are you getting this information about women not being visual creatures?"
-stormin
At this point, you are drawing a distinction between "label tags" and "html/xml tags". Two different things. We'll call "label tags" A and "html/xml tags" B.
In the context of me writing a post called: "labels make more sense". So clearly the idea: "what should we call these things" is already in play? Then, in a response to my post, someone notes the technical definition (incorrectly, as it turns out). So I simply point out that even if they are right about the technical term, why should we use that term when another term is better understood? This makes sense in the context of the question "what should we call these things" which was the context for this discussion, since the thread was branching off my reply to that effect.
It's not that I don't see what you are saying. I do. But you have this stubborn insistence at looking at A and B and refusing to acknowledge that the entire A/B discussion took place in the immediate contet of a question about what we should call the things.
-stormin
Yes, this is me being pedantic.
/.ers REALLY live in their mother's basement?
My friend, it's not you being pedantic. It's you using a straw man argument. I don't think you mean to, but you did. You see, you quote me as saying "it's true" when the phrase doesn't appear in what I wrote. There's no better example of a straw man than putting words in quotes that didn't exist in the original material. While I'm at it, I also didn't use the word evidence (although you didn't put that in quotes). The words I used were "anecdotal" and "seems".
I never claimed anything was proven, true, or evidenctiary. I just offered a subjective observation as such. There's nothing fallacious in that.
Nor have I heard any confusion between porn and actual sex, they are rather hard to confuse, after all.
If you'd read more posts, you would have. Here's one sample just from this thread: "It's not just men that like porn... PEOPLE LIKE SEX" Notice that? It's not just men that like porn, PEOPLE LIKE SEX" That's a blatant substitution of porn and sex, and I didn't have to look far to find it.
I don't think porn is really a "article of faith", I haven't heard anyone seriously proselytise porn, its more a running joke, like how many
It's an article of faith in that you're really not supposed to question it, not in that somebody is proselyting it. The Southern Baptist convention doesn't proselyte creation to each other, and Slashdotters don't proselyte porn to each other for the same version: it's assumed you already have a collection and enjoy watching it. If you want to see what I'm talking about, just wait until someone questions it and see the reaction. Again - just read these responses.
In any case, there are several examples of fallacious reasoning in your own post:
1. Though, we must realize that porn has been around as long as men, and society still hasn't ended.
So have STDs. So has murder. So has theft. Need I go on? Prevelence, even universality, has nothing to do with the moral or pragmatic worth of something. The connection is utterly fallacious.
2. The average porn viewer is probably not a rapist, or in any other way abnormal... Porn is not a cause.
The average smoker also doesn't have lung cancer. The idea that because it's more likely not to exhibit a reaction to a stimulus that therefore the stimulus doesn't lead to any consequence is ludicrious. I would simply turn your attention back to the fact, so far uncontested by you, that in the eyes of the american psychological establishment the effects of pornography are so negative that you can't get a controlled human study approved. That's pretty damning evidence, in my opinion. Furthermore, I never mentioned rape or in any way indicated that rape would be a consequence of watching porn. Why should it be? I'm thinking more about psychological harm as in problems with emotional intimicay, self-image, the way we treat women, etc.
Cheers,
-stormin
No, on Slashdot, there is a depraved vocal minority that wants to feel like they are okay objectifying women in selfish, addictive, and animal-like ways.
I'm sorry, but the minority is definitely those Slashdot users who don't have teh pronzorz on their computer. It's not a vocal minority that looks porn - it's practically every IT user in existence. There are only a handful of tech-savy individuals who, for any reason, don't like porn. They are out there, however.
As far as your characterization of porn, I find it more or less dead-on. Of course everyone on Slashdot thinks there's no difference between having sex and watching sex (see other replies). I have to wonder how much of that has to do with the fact that they watch too much porn and don't actually have sex very often? Sour grapes, perhaps? Or just inexperience? Because I can say that I quite enjoy having sex, even though I don't watch pron.
I'm not a Baptist; I'm just getting tired of the stereotype that techies are perverts and that if you belong to that *club* that makes porn acceptable.
Pron is not just "acceptable". It's an article of faith. You can get into a lot of trouble for questioning pron. That's kind of what my sig is all about.
What happened to the techie that had a sister or a mother or a cute little daughter and wanted to protect them from exploitation?
Pron isn't exploitation, it's a "career choice" (quoted from another reply). Personally I've noticed two things. First of all, the most promiscuos people I know also have the lowest self-esteem. Correlation or causation - I don't know, but it certainly seems as though there's a definite negative connection between pron and mental/emotional/psychological health. Anecdotal, I know, but there it is.
Secondly, we already know that pron is also both addictive and psychological dangerous to the watcher. So much so, that you can't get any studies approved to have people watch pron. For some reason, no one seems to think seriously about what that means. It's like smoking for your brain. Some smokers live to be 100 and die skydiving, but the general connection between smoking and lung-cancer is indisputable, and anyone that tried to do research by asking non-smokers to smoke would be laughed out of their job.
So yeah, welcome to the decided minority of techies who are opposed to pron.
-stormin (for the record, I'm also against creationism)
Even the trolls are lame on Saturday. I was clearly responding to the question of what the objective of this conversation should be.
If you're going to try to start fights, could you at least make them interesting? Sheesh.
-stormin (PS - interesting means more than just cussing at me. This is the internet after all. I've heard that before.)
Here's what a slow news day looks like: a couple of basement dwellers
I'm not a basement dweller! My house doesn't even have a basement. I'm actually in class today. (Can you tell how much I'm paying attention?)
-stormin
Why is Google using inconsistent terminology in its products for such an important term?
Well, since we were talking about this from the perspective of Google terminology for use in consumer apps (e.g. GMail) I thought the objective would clearly be to make it understandable to the masses. We're not talking about job security here, we're talking about convincing people to use GMail. This is marketing, not development. In other we don't care if it works, we care how it sounds.
-stormin
Why on earth would we revert to an obscure technical term rather than a common vernacular term when the objective is to make something easily understood to the masses?
-stormin
Stupid commoners.
-stormin
It makes more sense to call them "labels" because the word "tag" generally refers to html/xml tags. Since you can use these tags (although you don't have to) to create the label type of tags, it's especially confusing.
In any case, it's closer to plain English to call them labels. That's what you're doing. If I'm in GMail and I want to indicate that an email is work related it is closer to plain English to say that I labelled it work than to say that I tagged it work.
Is this what a slow news day really looks like?
-stormin
As far as the science goes, I certainly agree. But have you actually watched many of the episodes in order, starting with the real pilot? I saw the show on TV several times and thought it was weird. The dialog seemed hokey, the character interactions forced, etc. It was only after watching the pilot first that I started to realize the problem was that Firefly relies extremely heavily on on continuity. It's not really very episodic. The characters do quite a bit of growing and changing throughout the episodes, and their relationships even more so.
I don't know if that would strike you as "soap opera", but it struck me as a good art. The characters are well-drawn, well-directed, and well-played (with the possible exception of inara, but she wasn't too bad).
If you haven't tried a few episodes from the pilot, give it a shot. I think you'll be impressed.
-stormin
My mistake. Your examples are good ones.
-stormin
not to be a champion of artists' rights.
As opposed to whom? The RIAA? They're a "champion of artists' rights"? Please tell me you don't believe that for a second.
-stormin
I've spent this entire time clarifying and sharing my own ideas while waiting for you to do the same. I'm not sure what justifies your respone that I haven't "allowed" you to clarify your ideas. I'm certainly not controlling what you type, and every post has been an opportunity missed to do precisely what you say you want to do: explain yourself.
You've gone from one incorrect assumption of what I believe to another (that I hate uniquenes, that I don't understand that how many political viewpoints there are, etc.) Every time you've assumed something of me that is not true I haven't gotten offended, I've merely expressed what I do, in fact, believe. I hear in your posts what you took away from my posts, and I correct where I think you've assumed incorrectly. In this way the conversation (on my side) has moved from you calling me someone who hates uniqueness to you calling me an arrogant prick where, alas, it is stalled.
I'm not really interested in responding to your personal attacks on me. If you want to believe I'm an arrogant prick be my guest. I'm more interested in ideas. I'm more interested in the conversation than what you think of me personally. You've never met me, you probably never will, and so why should I care? What I do care about is having good, honest, earnest discussion. Arrogant or not, I believe I've been sincere in everything I've written so far. I have no interest in "winning". It's not about competition in that sense. It's about competition in the sense that challenging each others presumptions forces us to think clearly.
As long as you insist on retreating into smug superiority
It is a real rseponse, when you're an arrogant prick. And when it serves a useful purpose. Discover the purpose.
And yet, here you are. Just as I knew you'd be.
Yes, yes, you're going to respond with the "but you've only been attacking me" bit. Go ahead...
instead of open and honest dialog - even with an arrogant prick - there's not much for me to see. The irony is that despite your repeated insistence that I'm arrogant, it's you who refuses to condescend to the level of actually discussing issues with me and you who rejects my arguments without actually addressing them. This doesn't hurt my feelings, but it does illustrate that you've no interest in the kind of meeting of minds that makes me enjoy adversarial posting. I do not for a second believe you've nothing to tell me. I believe that you, like all thinking creatures, certainly have thoughts and ideas worth hearing. Since you've consistently demonstrated no interest in communication, however, it's probably time for me to pack it in.
Which, to me, is a sadness.
-stormin
what exactly was your point with stating scifi fans can't 'tell the difference' between weird sequelish titles and other weird titles, though?
Sorry if I wasn't more clear. It wasn't the titles. Have you read any of the Star Wars/Star Trek franchise books? Some of them are excellent, but the vast majority are utterly horrible. Despite this, they get read with gusto because they afford sci-fi fans one more chance to immerse themselves in their favorite alternate worlds. They exemplify the way sci-fi desperation for more of what they love ends up degrading the worlds they treasure. Because publishers have learned sci-fi fans will read literally anything with "Star Wars" in the title, there's no incentive to find really good authors.
As far as Serenity goes, you'll notice I singled out Firefly, and not Serenity. I think Serenity was better wasn't a bad movie, but it probably should have gone straight to DVD as well as SG1 for pretty much the same reason. (For the record, I'm not a fan of Joss Wheddon either personally or artistically. I loved Firefly - and you should try out the whole series, but I've never been able to get into Buffy or Angel.)
A lot of other movies are bad as well. I agree. But as a sci-fi fan I have a special interest in sci-fi. It's a much more tight-knit genre than, say, spy movies. Most movie genres like romantic comedy, military action, tenn comedy, don't really have a following of any kind. Sci-fi, on the other hand, has a tradition and a history (in literature if not really in film). I'd just like to see sci-fi on screen start to live up to some of the promise of sci-fi on paper.
-stormin
Yes, true. And that number and the nature of those viewpoints is far more and far more subtle than you will ever comprehend. Only an arrogant prick would believe that they understand them all and can thus categorize them. It's a sign of laziness too. Stereotype and you don't need to think too hard anymore.
You like to call me things (e.g. "arrogant prick") and then waste no time in doing exactly what you accuse me of doing. I suppose the difference is that in my case it's just arrogance, and in your case it's the truth.
In any case I'm well aware of the fact that I will probably never understand completely a single persons potlical viewpoints - including my own. This fact is not in dispute. Not by me, anyway. But your position makes no sense. We have to choose a level of granularity if we want to have a discussion (as I demonstrated in my last post). At a very low resolution, I look like a libertarian. At an extremely high resolution, the very concept of a "libertarian" is lost in the incredibly diverse minutia that various individuals (all grouped as libertarians at the low-resolution level) all maintain. At a high enough resolution, there are as many political viewpoints as there are human beings. If we employ your strategy of "ensure complete understanding" than we'll never get beyond the understanding point. That may sound rosy and fine, but if you wait for complete understanding before you act you'll never do anything. Imagine refusing to breathe until you completely understood the entire respiratory system, not to mention the atmosphere. Obviously "complete understanding" of any real-world phenomena quickly descends into an infinite regress.
We're humans. We exist as finite beings in an infinite world. That means we always act, by definition, without complete understanding. If we accept this fact, we can try to mitigate the ramifications. If we pretend it's not true, if we insist on seeking complete understanding before we act, we end up as paralyzed hypocrites because even in seeking to understand we are acting without understanding. Seek to understand, by all means, but also understand that you must continue to act in the mean time.
So it's not about laziness. It's about being pragmatic. Groups are useful things. I can say "men on average are taller than women" and, depending on the situation, I've said either something that's useful and true, or something that's useless and true.
If we were to follow your apparent credo of never generalizing about individuals ever all human conversation about politics would be impossible.
So I say again: it's all about granularity. I grouped you with left-wing democrats at a low-resolution. Either I was wrong, even at my very general resolution, or I was right but the level of resolution was inappropriate to the discussion (or both, I suppose).
Like I said: arrogant prick.
I suppose that's a substitute for a real rseponse?
There's always more than the words in the post. Don't bore me with the "all I can know is what you're written" argument. Ask before you argue.
This is silly. The only practical way to ascertain that I understood correctly what you wrote is to say it back to you. I have no way of knowing, a priori, what questions to ask. Sure, sometimes there's an obvious question, but asking questions is a bad filter to find miscommunications. A better filter is to go ahead with what you understood from the words, and allow the other person to correct you. On top of that, debate is inherently adversarial. This doesn't mean there has to be anger, but there does have to be opposition, just as there is opposition in a friendly game of ultimate frisbee.
I guess you're just not used to my level of competitiveness. In the future, however, you'd be better served to act a bit more thick-skinned and try to ascertain what the other person is thinking. Once you realize that that was part of what I was doing in my post, I think you'll realize I'm not quite the big jerk you think I am. If someone mischaracterizes you - or in any way offends you - you'd be better served to see if it was intentional or not first, and take offense second.
-stormin
I was referring to the RIAAs practice of suing everyone and their grandmother without regard to the evidence, literally. This is another element of the wack-a-mole strategy. I thought my reference to the RIAA by name, among other things, would have made this obvious.
-stormin
It was my understanding these were gonna be straight to dvd
I really, fervently hope so. Whatever it takes to keep these "films" (and I use the term loosely) away from mainstream cinemas. As if we need to give studios one more reason to demonstrate that sci-fi fans will watch anything, no matter how cheesey. This in turns removes any incentive to make good sci-fi, which further contributes to the (accurate) stereotype that sci-fi and art generally don't belong in the same sentence, which further drives the mainstream away from these releases, which further drains the funding available to make decent sci-fi (e.g. "Children of Men"), which further contributes to (you guessed it) Stargate. Yay.
I'm not just trying to troll. I love sci-fi. But I can't stand the fact that a lot of sci-fi fans can't tell the difference, for example, between "Star Wars: Roque Squadron 11", "Star Trek: Book #3423", and "Dune". The same thing happens in movies, and the result? Wing Commander. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0131646/)
Because sci-fi fans are willing to accept any old slop with aliens and lasers we get to watch "Stargate" instead of something with quality (like "Firefly"). I've tried more times than I can count to get into Stargate, but it has essentially the same production values as "Hercules" and "Xena: The Warrior Princess". It's enough to make an old-school sci-fi fan cry.
-stormin
This is a story we've heard before with other sites, only serving to further demonstrate that playing wack a mole with torrent aggregators isn't the solution to anything.
I wholeheartedly agree that, from the perspective of the **AA, playing wack-a-mole isn't a good solution. But as an observer it's pretty funny.
More seriously, I think it is providing a long term solution, just not the one the **AA want. As these stories grow they continue to be seen as the greedy bullies they truly are. The main purpose of the RIAA and MPAA these days is to do the dirty work for the actual labels/studios and absorb the backlash. People get mad at the RIAA, not Sony. Or so the strategy goes. As anti-RIAA and anti-MPAA sentiment grows in severity and spreads into the mainstream, there will start to be bleedthrough to the actual labels and studios.
So basically the wack-a-mole strategy is the best education we could hope for that IP laws are a disgrace, that greed is the real motivator of DRM, and that DRM does nothing but create a nuisance for the consumer without effectively harming pirates. I want more and more of your average Joes to hear about stuff like this and start asking "What is with these guys anyway?" The answers will lead to some sensible IP reform.
It's a long-term goal, and I realize that in the meantime a lot of innocent people are having their lives ruined, but I think that tactics like this go a long way towards the final solution for DRM.
-stormin
And, what, it's your job to crush folks feelings of uniqueness? It's your duty to destroy their sense of political self? Make them realize that, yes, in fact they are part of the hive, and no different from everyone else?
You've proven yourself to be exactly what you despise: unique. A uniquely sick fucker, but unique nonetheless.
Wow - melodrama much? The difference between you and I is that i take it as a given that people are unique. It's not something we need to reinforce. It's right up there with "and humans are bipedal". Honestly, chill. Despite that fact that people are unique, generalizations also apply to an extent. There are only but so many political viewpoints to be had. The major political philosphies in America now are what - liberals, conservatives, communists, anarchists, libertarians? 5? Say it's 10 for kicks and giggles, and you still obviously can group people together in large, generalized groups. Of course within the groups there are differences, but the finer the distinctions you make, the less they matter to everyone else. I'm more or less a libertarian. So I have a lot in common with other libertarians. I'm also pro-life, however, which is not a very libertarian position. So if we're talking big picture I'd be happy for someone to be like "you, as a libertarian,..." I would see no need to specify the subtle disctinctions between myself and other libertarians unless/until it became an issue. Unlike you, being grouped or classified in itself doens't threaten or intimidate my sense of individuality. I don't need strangers on Slashdot to re-affirm that I'm really a precious unique snowflake. On the other hand, if we were talking about abortion and you said "you, as a libertarian..." I'd have to specify the ways in which, on this issue, I'm not really like other libertarians. But again, it's silly to take it all so personally and dive into such deep melodrama.
I've never argued that you're not unique, just made fun of you for having such a desperate need to have it reaffirmed by strangers in a political discussion. I guess that's not very nice, but I'm still having a hard time believing that any rational adult posting about politics would really consider their individuality something they need to prove or demonstrate to strangers. If I really believed you were that vulnerable, I'd never have bothered arguing with you in the first place, let alone making fun of you.
Nope, you did so based on what you read. If you don't know the difference you can give up now.
Oh very, very clever. And continuing the melodrama. Let me phrase it this way: I did it based on the words in the post. As far as the difference between "what you wrote" and "what I read" that's just a difference between intention and interpretation. There's no point - none whatsoever - in my trying to guess what goes on in your head other than by reading and interpreting the words you have written. I've given my interpretation, my explanation of the interpretation, and afforded you every opportunity to engage me and explain why my interpretation was flawed. I'm completely open to seeing in your words something other than what I interpreted. I'd be happy to have you elucidate what you meant. That's what we call communication.
You have, however, so far failed to do anything other than tell me there's no point in arguing with me (before trying) and insist that if I don't see things you way I "can give up now". The very picture of maturity.
BTW, the contents of your posts are irrelevant.
No wonder it doesn't feel like I'm communicating. Clearly all that's relevant to you is the establishment of your own individuality. I suggest you get to the point where you no longer feel that your uniqueness is threatened by strangers and then try to have a discussion on Slashdot. You're bringing a lot of unnecessary baggage to the table and looking in all the wrong places of positive affirmation of your uniqueness. Isn't there a support group or something you could join?
-stormin
(PS - are you a guidance counselor?)