Lord Antares

6 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Since you aren't the OP and the intention of the OP is obvious, I'd suggest it's you that's missing the point.

You are wrong. Re-read the OP. He mentiones (and quotes) several members of the forum using the word retarded. None of the examples were directed towards a mentally challenged person. Hence, you are missing the point.

4 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

This rather misses the point.

There are lots of rude things you can call me, without upsetting another group of people with whom you have no disagreement.

Why choose the one that upsets them?
I accept it's not obvious why one word troubles them, but another doesn't. I have given my guess as to why it might be. (The use of a quasi medical term is "too close for comfort").

 

15 minutes ago, Lord Antares said:

 If you're talking about other people being offended by your usage of the word, then, again, I point to the word ''idiot''. Why wouldn't they be offended by it? 

You agreed that this isn't right. I want to know the why, not the ''are enough people offended by this''.

2 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

But it is the topic of this thread.

You're missing the point. Is calling challenged people retarded the topic or is calling unchallenged people retarded the topic? Because I'm talking about the latter. Obviously, you shouldn't demean challenged people; no one will disagree with that.

42 minutes ago, Outrider said:

Why isn't it enough that the experts say it is unacceptable?

Why would it be? I want a straightforward answer to my question. ''Because people say so'' isn't a real answer.

42 minutes ago, Outrider said:

L.A. the answer to your last question is here.

http://www.r-word.org/

All I can see here is ''some people were insulting my challenged relative by calling him retarded''. Obviously, it is not OK to insult mentally challenged people like that. This is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about calling random people ''retarded'' vs. stupid or idiotic. What is the difference? Why is the former insulting and the latter isn't. I assumed that's what we were talking about. Because if you're talking about insulting actual challenged people, then everyone will agree with you.

32 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

I'm not sure you need to have logic.

If people find it insulting, don't do it.

But if you want to call someone retarded or an idiot, you want to insult them. If you're talking about other people being offended by your usage of the word, then, again, I point to the word ''idiot''. Why wouldn't they be offended by it? 

32 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

TBH, I'd possibly use some deliberately insulting term to question your intellectual capacity. I'd like to think I know better than that but...

You see, that's another thing I've been asking the mods and they haven't replied. It's actually very similar to what we're talking about here.

You've alluded that this person is stupid. If you had outright called him stupid, you would have (possibly) been given a warning. It's the same scenario. The intention is the same, only you haven't used the ''forbidden word'' - stupid. This doesn't make sense to me either. I've seen plenty of people get away with it when they play around with words a bit, yet they mean to insult. It is paradoxical.

BTW, I don't have anything against you, I just want to talk about this from a technical perspective. Does this make sense to you?

15 minutes ago, dimreepr said:

Hmmm... I'm starting to think I'm invisible, much like those we're discussing, since I've addressed most of the subsequent posts.

I have read your post and I personally haven't found anything which I've found to address the last few posts. Just to make sure, I've read it twice now. 

Yes, that's what I'm saying. I don't see the logic behind it. I would like to hear the justification from the people who think it's unnaceptable.

13 minutes ago, John Cuthber said:

I'm just wondering about the suggestion that Americans don't understand irony.

The fact is that none of the posters here are idiots in the technical sense, but most of us are (from time to time) in the colloquial sense.

iNow's use of the word was deliberately (a bit ) offensive to people who can't be truly offended by the description- because it's plainly not true.

 

However people use  the word "retarded" as both an insult and a euphemism.

20 years ago that was legitimate, but the language has changed (as it always does) and now it is linguistically correct* to use "retarded" as an insult, but not correct to use it as a genuine  description of an individual.

It's a bit like calling someone a w*nker- it doesn't mean what it actually means. Most people understand the intention- that it's an insult- even though, in most cases, it's a technically perfectly accurate descriptor.

 

The  issue of "calling people names" gets even more stupid when absurd when people use the word "bastard" as an insult. Either you are, or you aren't- and if you are, it's your parent's responsibility, and nothing to do with you.

 

* that doesn't mean it's OK to do it.

I don't really see your point. As far as I can tell, you're saying that the word ''idiot'' usually isn't meant to have the original meaning of the word. It's simply a means to say that someone is being stupid. I get that. The same way that ''retarded'' is also usually not used in the technical form of the word. So I ask, why does no one jump at being called an idiot and they do at being called a retard? They have the same colloquial meaning and (pretty much) the same technical meaning.

21 minutes ago, iNow said:

There are valid uses of the term, no doubt, but our OP seems to be referring to the uses intended to insult and we should likely focus this discussion there.

I, for one, agree with him and am deeply sympathetic to his request having changed my own usage of the term after someone with a disability maturely and bravely explained to me the hurt I was causing in them. I respect the character it took to speak up and respected them enough to adjust my behavior accordingly  

There is a vast spectrum of mental abilities and handicaps. In our recent past, we lumped them all together and threw them into asylums calling them each retarded... one broad generalizing brush that caused us to miss their individual talents and capabilities. This happened whether they had severe deficits or minor ADD or OCD or landed somewhere on the autism spectrum.

We’ve been told that the term retarded is both inaccurate and hurtful. For all but the biggest idiots among us, that should be enough to change... shouldn’t it?

But why? For example, you've used the word ''idiot'' instead here. Taken from the Merriam-Webster dictionary:

Quote

Definition of idiot

1dated, now offensive :a person affected with extreme mental retardation

2:a foolish or stupid person

What is the difference? They may not be 100% synonymous, as John pointed out, but they're very close. Why is ''idiot'' so widely accepted and ''retarded'' is not?

25 minutes ago, iNow said:

I, for one, agree with him and am deeply sympathetic to his request having changed my own usage of the term after someone with a disability maturely and bravely explained to me the hurt I was causing in them.

This is a special case. It might not be appropriate to say the word in front of him, the same way you wouldn't talk about rape in front of rape victims. It doesn't mean one must never mention it.

Also, he should be affended by saying ''stupid'' or ''idiot'' but he isn't.

34 minutes ago, amplitude said:

(eg which is correct according to the axioms of arithmetic, 1 - 0.999... = 0 or 1 - 0.999... = .000...1?  And the latter answer, theoretically the smallest possible number, would be an imaginary number,

How many times do you need to be told that 0.000...1 is invalid? It is illogical. You cannot define a ''theoretically smallest possible number) because it does not exist. In the same vain, you could write something like 36.232323...6 and it would make even less sense.

0.00...1 is paradoxical and nonsensical. For the last time, when you put that 1 at the end (or any number would do the job, really), you immediately make the number of zeroes before it finite.

1 minute ago, amplitude said:

I really am saying goodnight this time, chaps.  I thank those of you who have helped me to clarify my thoughts since my initial post;  but we haven't made any real progress in answering the original question, so I think it's probably time to close this thread.

You are pretentious.

I, for one, don't see the fuss about using the word. I've used it here and I use it in my daily life. 

The word literally means ''slow''. Did you know that ''idiot'', ''moron'' and ''cretin'' are synonyms? As far as I know, they also used to be medical terms which all referred to people of low intelligence until they became general terms for insulting. So why is there a fuss about ''retarded'' and not ''moron'', for example?

20 minutes ago, Outrider said:

For the crowd that believes 0.999 = 1.

Does this mean 0.999 is useless?

No. 0.999 does not equal 1. 

0.999...however, equals 1. There is an infinite difference between the two. The three dots imply that the nines continue into infinity. Since you cannot identify a real number in between 0.999... and 1, the conclusion must follow that 0.99... = 1.

20 minutes ago, Outrider said:

Does .0991 also equal 1?

In the same vain, no. Not even 0.0991... equals 1. For example, 0.991... < 0.992 < 1, therefore, it doesn't equal 1, since there is a number which is higher than it but lower than 1.

EDIT: Beaten to it by pzpkfw.

I agree with you in all regards. Both from the point of reducing rape and ''the moral point''. There is simply nothing wrong with it. Absolutely no reason for it to be illegal. Of course, under the circumstances that no one is being threatened or forced into anything.

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

...show some data on how badly men fare in the workforce and we can go from there. ..

...but not if they are merely used to invalidate the experience of women...

See, this is the sort of strawman argument I always get. I've seen this type of sarcastic comment before; something like ''oh yeah, men have it so badly.''

That is not my point. I wouldn't disagree that women, in general, have it somewhat worse than men. The truth of that depends on the context of the situation though. As far as sexual harrassment goes, obviously women are more affected, but as far as general violence goes, men have it worse. What about emotional support for men? What about ''needing to be strong''? The point is, for every female inequality (which should be talked about), there is almost certainly a male inequality (which should also be talked about). Yet it almost never is. And when it is, someone just says ''but look how worse it is for women in this and that regard'', the same thing I'm doing right now.

1 hour ago, CharonY said:

The problem is that you provided an anecdotal account of a personal experience.

It depends on what you mean by anecdotal. It's not a ''one man's experience''. The students from all throughout my country are affected by the same inequality. They couldn't apply for half of the jobs and the ones they could generally paid less than the ones given to women. I wouldn't exactly call a sample size of a country ''anecdotal''. I would link you the evidence if you spoke my language. 

I have no issue with talking about women's issues. In fact, I'm opposed to mysogyny (as any reasonable person should be); I'm just pointing out that only women's societal issues are being solved and talked about. Rarely ever men's.

6 hours ago, swansont said:

Alleged rule breaking isn't going to garner warnings unless they are reported and checked out. We can discuss such things further if you open a thread in the Support topic.

I sent several specific examples via PM to a mod (as I was asked) where a group of people was slurred (called stupid, both directly and indirectly, depending on the example) without consequence and with approval, most of the time. I was ignored.

This group of people were, of course, conservatives. I made the same slur (albeit worded ''more harshly'') about ultra-liberals and got warned. I don't care about the warning, I care about the principle. Which is it - can you not make slurs against any groups or can you not make them about the groups you care about?

42 minutes ago, CharonY said:

I think one of the things that people (men) miss is the different experience in many situations...

I also think that one of the things people miss that equality goes for both sides. I support righting the wrongs for women and I condemn sexual harrassment and demeaning women or considering them less worthy. However, I also condemn inequalities for men.

I gave an example where I remember looking for jobs as a student and about 50% of them explicitly asked for females (the other 50% were available to both sexes) and they were the better paying jobs too. But no one cares about that. If the situation was reversed, I guarantee you people would lose their shit.

5 hours ago, TakenItSeriously said:

That's funny, because It should make you think he does't understand monkeys.

/cut

2 hours ago, Thorham said:

 Monkey brains, like human brains, are probably not good generators of randomness, and as such it's possible that a monkey will never type out Hamlet, or any other complete text.

Why do people here have trouble understanding that monkeys are a metaphor for randomness? Substitute monkeys with random.org or God's unbiased mathematically random machine or whatever you feel is more fitting to the scenario.

19 hours ago, thoughtfuhk said:

Technically, hamlet is a modern ape, so i guess the answer is however long hamlet took to write it

Humans are modern apes...

You mean ''Shakespeare'', not ''Hamlet'', right?

On 25. 09. 2017. at 8:39 PM, tar said:

seems the answer to the OP question  of how long it would take is "a stupid large number of years

And being that we don't have a stupidly large number of years to play with, it seems the literal answer is "they won't"

Infinity is a device, not a number, so it can not be considered in the calculation.   Neither can infinite universes or the consideration of an infinite amount of attempts or an infinite amount of monkeys.   I think as soon as you put infinity in the equation your answer is by definition undefined.  Like dividing by zero.   Infinity is not a number, and can not take part in the literal calculation.

This is simple mathematics. There is no reason why there couldn't be infinite tries. It is the same as saying ''given infinite time, when would you be expected to roll 10 threes on a die in a row''. It doesn't imply that infinity will ever come into play and it won't. It is simply a different problem than saying ''what are the odds that you will roll 10 threes in a row on the first try?''.

18 minutes ago, swansont said:

So how can one conclude it was the position that garnered a down-vote, and not the shoddy/fallacious support for that position?

One can conclude that if one side gains a warning or is otherwise told to stop breaking the rules and the other side gets away with the same exact thing. The downvotes are a secondary thing, not really all that important. But they are sometimes gained unfairly, IMO.

This doesn't necessarily apply to this topic. It particularly applies to liberal/conservative polilitical discussions in which tar takes the opposing view to the majority of the forum, from the few examples I've personally seen.

18 minutes ago, zapatos said:

/cut

17 minutes ago, Arete said:

/cut

I skimmed through the thread. I did not really grasp the context of the situation. If it's ''have sex with me or I'll ruin your career'', then of course, I agree that's sexual harrassment. I thought it was more in the line of your other example. I apologize if I misinterpreted the situation.

For example, take these two quotes without context as an example.

Tar:

''If penetration happened without their consent then it was rape.   If it happened with their consent, then they were selling their body for a chance at stardom.  

It cannot be rape, if they said yes then and are saying no now.  Nor is it sexual harassment if they knew exactly what and why they were doing at the time, and are just now deciding that they are not whores at all, but victims, in retrospect.''

Without context, in general, I agree 100% with this quote. It doesn't imply anyone was forced into doing anything. If I misinterpreted it, then that's another story.

Arete:

'' Demanding sexual favors in return for career advancement is very specifically and very clearly defined, legally, as sexual harassment. It's absolutely unequivocal.  ''

Without context, I 100% disagree with this quote. It doesn't imply the ruining of one's career if one declines. Again, if that's the context I'm missing, then I agree with you.

Just now, Arete said:

FTFY

Has tar called rape victims as whores? Victims by which definition? If so, I have missed it and change my opinion. As far as I can tell, you're not talking about ''actual'' rape victims; you are talking about those who traded sex for position. Am I correct?

3 minutes ago, zapatos said:

Bullshit

I have done that and have been shunned before. In my experience, it's not bullshit.

I think tar is the smart one in this thread.

38 minutes ago, tar said:

Oh come on thread.  Too many neg reps with no reason cited.

If you state opinions which remotely resemble something deviating from liberalism, you will get shunned and downvoted. That's why I don't participate here. I will just get negged for my efforts of stating my opinions. It creates an unhospitable atmosphere for anyone who doesn't have the majority opinion here. This is why I avoid these kinds of discussions; it's not worth it.

You should know this by now.

34 minutes ago, amplitude said:

I would answer, if we stipulate  positive integers, then the real-number successor of 7 is 8.  Just as 8 is the natural-number successor of 7, according to the definitions of arithmetic, so +8 is the successor of +7 in the line of real integers. 

No, it isn't really. Why would you reduce the set of real numbers to the naturals? It is uncalled for. There are infinitely many numbers in between 7 and 8 (and between any real numbers as well).

36 minutes ago, amplitude said:

On the other hand, if we admit all of the possible numbers in the number plane, then the successor of 7 might be 7+h (h being a more respectable way to write 0.000...1).

What you are trying to do is define an infinitesimal. But an infinitesimal cannot exist because, as has been noted, there cannot be an infinite amount of zeroes and then 1 at the end. If it ends in 1, then there MUST be a finite number of zeroes. Do you understand that a decimal number ending in any given number must, by definition, be finite?

5 minutes ago, amplitude said:

The clear implication, though as far as I know Cantor doesn't appeal to it directly, is that the first number would be 0.000...1 and the last number would be 0.999... (0.000...1 being what you are left with, if you subtract 0.999... from 1, according to the axioms of arithmetic).

But that number doesn't exist. You can't have a never-ending sequence of numbers and then have a number at the end. It is paradoxical. That's why reals can't have successors.

59 minutes ago, amplitude said:

So do 0.999... and 1 have the same successor?  Nobody has denied that they are different numbers;  but arguments purport that they are of equal absolute value;  does this mean that they have the same successor?

There are no successors to any real numbers. 0.99999... is no different than, say, 7 in that regard. Which real number comes after 7?

1 hour ago, conway said:

I suppose you think "facts" are unchangeable?  Case in point....Greek ellipses...case in point flat earth.....facts can be challenged...

Those are not ''facts''. Those are just hypotheses or wild guesses. The majority consensus is not a fact. You need to understand what a fact is. Nothing (afaik) in science outside of math is considered factual. The highest degree is a theory, like relativity or evolution, hence the remodelling and re-thinking.

Also, I don't know what a greek elipse is. Google shows zero results.

11 hours ago, pzkpfw said:

Relatedly, between any two real numbers, are an infinite number of reals, e.g. between 0.9 and 1.0 is 0.95; what's between 0.999... and 1.0?

I think this is the best example for what the OP is looking for, described with words and not symbols. There must be an infinite amount of real numbers between any two numbers. Seeing how no defined number is in between 0.999... and 1, one must conclude that 0.999 = 1.

2 hours ago, Aki Tendo said:

/cut

Good question. You are correct in that there is no universal age of the universe. As I understand it, the the most ''neutral'' way to calculate it is from the cosmic microwave background, which would be equivalent to calculating it from ''aboslute space''. That is, picking a point which is completely at rest, only moved by the expansion of the universe. Since time moves the slowest for objects at rest, this is the maximum possible age of the universe. Obviously, for someone theoretically travelling at the speed of light since big bang, the universe isn't even a second old.

Now, if you search a bit on this, you will find some people saying that 13.8 billion (not trillion!) years is relative to us on earth, but you can even easily accept that since the difference between CMB and the earth is miniscule. Calculating the age of the univers from almost any point within the universe will give roughly an equal value, simply since the expansion of space is the biggest factor in movement for a vast majority of objects in the universe. There are exceptions like black holes, but this generally holds true.

Here is a short article which gives exact values and also concludes that you can consider the universe to be pretty much of the same age throughout the universe.

http://www.askamathematician.com/2017/07/q-if-time-is-relative-then-how-can-we-talk-about-how-old-the-universe-is/

EDIT: When you say everyone's frame of reference is different, you are correct. However, Anything moving at high speed tend to be short lived. For example, a person speeding in a space rocket is going to be moving fast (relative to an earth-bound observer) for an insignificant fraction of the time elapsed since the big bang. By and large, the majority of matter's movement is going to be mostly by the expansion of space, hence the conclusion that measuring the age of the universe from different points within it is going to differ by only a small amount.

Have you been taking any drugs? If not, I have been seeing some sort of hypnagogia with eyes closed open and closed all my life. It's patterns, colours, swirling circles, flashes etc. It's much more prominent in the dark, with the eyes both closed and open. I forgot I had this until I read what you wrote. These are called phosphenes:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phosphene

They are some theories, but no one knows what causes it and it doesn't bring any danger as far as I know. I don't know if this is what you're talking about. Yours seems more severe (smoke, blurring, stuff flying accross your vision) and it has suddenly started happening to you, so it might or might not be that.

Anyway, it's probably best to go see a doctor.

12 hours ago, Trurl said:

If you think it is good science to only to test one aspect. That is why if a psychologist gets a test that someone excelled or did not excel, they evaluate further. One test might show a high I.Q. but isn’t more of an intelligence test if you actually know something about the person?

If someone said a pilot should have an I.Q. of 120 or above, would that mean everyone above 120 should fly a plane?

But what does that have to do with anything? You NEED to evaluate a pilot's motor skills and performance under pressure because that's a job requirement but it has nothing to do with general IQ: He's claiming people born on specific dates have specific IQs which has nothing to do with their personality. He should only be focusing on IQ.

12 hours ago, Trurl said:

I have read studies on creativity. Specifically, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. He did not go around passing out I.Q. test. Instead he rigorously interviewed creative people and looked to see what they had in common and how they differed from others.

Again, nothing to do with the topic we're discussing here.

12 hours ago, Trurl said:

Why is designing your own experiment bad advice? The APA format is designed to introduce an experiment and show the results and findings. If you cannot find a I.Q. test (which is hard for the armchair psychologist), what is wrong with designing your own based on research, to fit the needs of the study? I think it would be a lot more fun and be more meaningful then passing out some test you don’t understand let alone did not designed and not have it meet your needs.

Simply because you (and we) aren't eligible to do that. How does he evaluate the number of the person's IQ based on his custom test? How does he know what means what and how to hand out values? What number would you put if a person solved all your question correctly? What about all questions correct but slower?

13 hours ago, Trurl said:

I truly would like to see this community work on such a project. With the knowledge of this community surely some here is a practicing psychologist or has been through I.Q. testing. I am not saying make a better movie, but have write one of those YouTube alternative endings.

And why not simply use the IQ tests readily available to him? He has already dismissed to results of a scientific IQ study becaus they don't fit his hypothesis.

58 minutes ago, Chriss said:

I did not said the clever people are born under the full moon. There are separate cycles and how they intersect when someone is born, that way he is marked by them. I don't know what makes someone creative. People born under full moon have a powerful memory and physical energy.

You still haven't done what I told you. It would be a very easy way to systematically disprove (or if correct, continue proving) your hypothesis. Since you refuse to do it in a scientific manner, you shouldn't expect anyone to take you seriously.

I currently play PUBG when playing with others, and F.E.A.R. (the first one) as a singleplayer game.