TheVat

This is normally where someone says "game, set, match, " but we left Normal a long ways back. This gyre of whirling plastic could spin forever. Seems unfortunately typical when discussions come down to whether or not words are harmful. And that's about what actions the words connect with, often what sort of work or school environment can be formed by those words and what threats they may imply.

While I agree there is a tiny lunatic fringe that may want to sanitize Huck Finn or Catch 22 or whatever, I think this is mostly a straw man in this topic. A very small group is unable to comprehend historical context (or the Stalinist dangers of rewriting) and they do occasionally provide fodder for clickbait when they erupt somewhere. This group hardly represents any vast brigade of political correctness. But I'm sure Murdochs, NewsMax, and OAN would love to get their subscribers to believe it.

No offense taken, and I knew your intent. (I wouldn't give a plus one to a post I was offended by) Often, when a there is a partial quote, I like to note that it was such for other readers who may have not seen that post in its entirety and therefore not understand its overall thrust. To get back to your point, I think this thread could be concluded if we could successfully differentiate between behavior that is just rude and that which brings discrimination and harm. That's why I worry when platforms like Twitter become public trials, where there is mostly chaos, piling on, and no factfinding procedure. When these cases are settled in a courtroom, however, there is hope that legal precedents can be set that illuminate the difference between breaches of etiquette and breaches of law. It's funny, we all can now grasp that a person's persistent choice of "n---er" in addressing a black person may be legal harassment, but somehow the use of an offensive pronoun to a trans person with the same persistence leaves many people defensive and even dismissing the force of the verbal act. The implication is that black people are a "real" minority group, with an authentic struggle for social equality and acceptance, but trans people are not. Some of the attitudes I've witnessed in my community seem to be based on this distinction, and some people are pretty open about it. The error, as several have pointed out here, is that once we start saying an identity is "just in your head," we have a leverage to say that being Catholic, or Muslim, or gay, is "just in your head." So what's really happening is a ghettoization of beliefs - some get protected, others not so much. Believe in Sky Daddy Version 4.3, and you're protected by law. Believe in your essential femaleness though born XY, and you're just some nutty person who has to take whatever is dished out. Seems like a double standard.

It's possible that you have too many assumptions here, not that they're all bad ones. Nothing wrong with dreams. However, it's worth asking why you assume that anyone born a girl is meant to be an athlete or a mother. It's not a duty, you know. Some women have very fulfilling lives not mothering or zipping around a track. No one has programmed you to be anything, you are a free person, and you probably can choose among many life goals and find ones that both fit and are realistic. You don't need to melt down when people ask you to consider biological reality before making important life goals. People who offer reality checks are friends. People who feed you nonsense and go along with delusions are not real friends, and I would distance myself from them. I wanted to be a jazz pianist at one point. And I do okay on a piano. But I have short fingers and stiffness in both hands due to a couple automotive accidents and a fall from a roof. And, TBH, I lack talent. So I'm never going to play The Blue Note, and that's okay. Life has much to offer. Keep your mind open.

My impression which is (full disclosure) based on random observations over many decades is that "oversensitive" is often what white, straight, middle-class, Christian, normally-abled people call people whose life difficulties they've never remotely experienced. In other words, it's often used in ignorance and applied to a group of people they don't know and whose forms of discrimination they're never going to experience. These responses remind of that classic Onion headline: Racism Over, White People Declare!

Thanks! If you read the rest of my post, which didn't get quoted, it indicated that I saw compelling cases made here for that sort of respect. But kudos for bringing some statistical facts to the issue. Plus one.

Great posts today. Whether or not to call someone a silly name, especially one based on a delusion, would be more a matter of etiquette than morality. Unless there was harm potential -- say there was a situation where SUO, if challenged, would attempt to demonstrate his bona fides by leaping from a high window. Being a genuine space unicorn myself, I know that our amazing flight skills are not shared by the SU wannabes like INow. Calling someone the pronoun fitting their gender state involves something with a moral component: acceptance of their own sense of identity without entailing any acceptance of their worldview. You may either be accepting that or you may not but you are accepting the etiquette of the situation and perhaps the moral weight. If you decline to use their preferred pronoun, you are being rude but the issue at the heart of all this is: are you also oppressing them? Is there harm that may come? I think several here have made a case that there is harm because the act of rudeness actually becomes an attack on a person's basic identity and an attack which encourages others to also pile on, and which can leave the mis-pronouned person isolated and alienated. While I think there are gray areas here, I would think a prudent person can navigate them and understand when they are making a faux pas and when they are engaged in character attack and/or discrimination. I like the priest example. If I speak respectfully to others, I should include the priest in my domain of respect, even if I hold his avocation to be founded on delusion. And there are definitely areas of the world where discrimination against Catholics can be abetted by shows of disrespect. A lot of morality comes from awareness of the potential consequences of our actions (and I include words, as actions) to others.

I have similar objections to the recent sarcastic usage of "woke" or "woke brigade" which people on the conservative Right are using. PC, woke, illiberal, social justice warriors -- all terms used to avoid actually addressing the issue raised. It's really just name-calling. I had "woke brigade" used on me recently for making the outrageous suggestion that schoolchildren would survive learning about Jim Crow laws and events like the Greenwood massacre. My interlocutor felt that school history classes should focus entirely on noble men astride magical horses that pooped rainbows.

If the astronaut climbed onto a shelf at the top of the box, and was in a gravitational field of a planet, wouldn't his G meter show a tiny decrease in force due to his greater distance from the CoG? I guess what I'm asking, in a nonserious way, is what scales are truly local.

Nice. And that conversion might give better mileage than hauling that stuff in a pickup truck. Anything hauled in an open bed has more air resistance than enclosed in a van. (and, from sad experience, I know it's hard to haul anything that comes in 4x8 sheets in a fuel efficient light truck like an S10)

I take your point, insofar as miles driven goes. However, insurance is not the "only waste" involved in the third car. Quite a bit of carbon in manufacturing a car. OTOH, I could toss you this lifeline of virtue: if you bought a third car that's got good MPG, much better than the other two, then opting to drive it more could recoup some or all of that extra manufacturing carbon and more. Or you could (now I'm just playing) loan it to an Uber driver, thereby improving the average MPG of the local Uber fleet.

Asking someone if they believe in God seems way more than a yes or no question. For example, if I had responded "pantheist" in a more serious vein, that would not exactly be a yes or a no, and take further clarification. I am, BTW, agnostic, due to what I see as uncertainty inherent in any metaphysical knowledge. Especially where a universal consciousness is concerned. Questioning the form of a question is fair play, IMO.

I'm a pantheist, which means I believe in stealing trousers! (pant + heist = pantheist)

And the scale that housing reform happens at is municipal. A scale where it helps to have concrete examples of success stories to show local officials when zoning law changes or building code changes or fixed structure criteria are being proposed. And there's a lot more than twelve. Tiny houses can include a range of builds, from small permanent foundation homes to separate garages that are converted into habitable rentable cottages to units that can be put up on a trailer bed. When municipal law doesn't choke off the options, a lot can happen. As a wiser man than I once said, "all politics is local. " It was just one example, my earlier post was making a broader point about the value of individual choices even when large-scale collective political forces are caught up in gridlock and grinding along glacially. It either strikes a chord or doesn't I guess.

Well, there's this prof, who faced disciplinary action, and the federal appeals court sided with him.... A Christian professor of philosophy who was reprimanded for refusing to refer to a trans student as a woman can pursue his lawsuit against Shawnee State University in Ohio, a federal appeals court said Friday. Shawnee State “punished a professor for his speech on a hotly contested issue,” the appeals court said. “And it did so despite the constitutional protections afforded by the First Amendment.” The case stemmed from a 2018 political philosophy class in which the professor, Nicholas Meriwether, called a trans woman “sir.” Meriwether said it happened accidentally, as no one informed him of the student’s preferred pronoun. After class, the student “demanded” to be called “Ms.,” like other female students, and threatened to have him fired if he didn’t, according to Meriwether’s lawsuit. The university initially asked Meriwether to stop using masculine and feminine titles and gendered pronouns, but he argued this was next to impossible. Instead, he said he would refer to the student in question by her last name only. The student was dissatisfied with this approach, as Meriwether continued to address other students as “Ms.” and “Mr.” Meriwether also called the student “Mr.” again in front of the class by accident, he says. The student allegedly threatened to sue Shawnee State, which in turn pressured Meriwether further to address the student in her preferred manner. Meriwether agreed -- on the condition that he could put a disclaimer in his syllabus about how he was following the university’s pronoun policy under compulsion, and stating his views about biological sex and gender being one and the same and immutable. Meriwether’s dean rejected this as incompatible with the university’s gender identity policy. The case was referred to the university’s office for compliance with Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits gender-based discrimination. Meriwether, who continued to refer to the student by her last name only, was found to have created a “hostile environment” for her via disparate treatment. (Again, he continued to call other students "Mr." and "Ms.") Meriwether argued against this finding, saying that the student received high marks in the course, and that he didn’t treat her substantially differently from any other student. “Reasonable minds” could differ about this “newly emerging cultural issue,” he said in a letter to his provost. Unswayed, the provost put a warning letter in Meriwether’s personnel file, telling him to follow the pronoun policy to “avoid further corrective actions.” (.....) https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/03/29/court-sides-professor-who-repeatedly-misgendered-trans-student My feeling is everyone was pretty rigid about their position and there could have been less hyperventilating all the way around. The professor, for all his claims of "accident" seemed to be being provocative. Most of us who reach adulthood figure out to call other people what they want to be called - it's called common courtesy. The trans student, in turn, didn't need to start threatening lawsuits and getting him fired, because the professor is a jerk. The best way to disappoint a jerk is to ignore their petty provocations. And there's always those teacher evaluation forms, at semester's end. I'm sure he's going to pay for all that "Mister" crap, when those forms reach the Dean's desk. But putting him on unemployment for it seems extreme to me.

Don't you live in Iowa? So you've credibly found a way to avoid peeing in the ocean. Seriously, I don't see human energy as something like a battery that's just going to drain and go dead if I do more than one thing. Most of our political power, as individuals, is mediated through our elected officials, and we all know how good they are at hearing us and acting in the public interest. So NGO groups, like say the Nature Conservancy or the NRDC, that pool the resources and energy (money, esp.) of private citizens also seem like a fruitful path. As do consumer boycotts, and all the "hundredth monkey" stuff where people spread their behaviors to others around them. There are so many carbon-mitigating things that our government just won't do, because it doesn't get people reelected. Take smaller houses. Elected officials all have to pander to their rich donor class, who doesn't want anyone interfering with the building of, and aggressive marketing of, big square footage houses in sprawling subdivisions, because they see that as their profit center. If people want to live in smaller houses (which require less energy), they have to go directly to the building industry and demand them. Or contribute to a public interest outfit that can pool resources and find bigger crowbars to use under those contractors, and generally promote the concept of small houses across media platforms. I will note that the most extreme form of this idea, the Tiny House movement, has taken hold with a lot of people without much help from government. I'm seeing them for sale now on places like Craigslist, and they get snapped up pretty fast.

This seems like a separate issue from the merits or lack of JP. I agree there is too much combing over what anyone says in search of something you can take offense at. When people do this in mass shamings on social media, it can feel Maoist and wrong. Neither the right to say stupid things, nor the right to dispute them, should be abridged. I have even gone online to defend the free speech of RW nut jobs, and support their right to public podia, on the principles of intellectual freedom and of everyone being free to counter their free speech with their own free critique. And no one has a special right to be protected from offense, unless it is from speech that specifically violates laws on fomenting sedition, hate crime, or slander (usually defined in terms of damage to livelihood and reputation). That said, I think there are reasons to critique JP, so long as critique doesn't extend to censoring or deplatforming. If he is saying things other people are thinking, then I want to hear him simply because I deem it worthwhile to know what other people are thinking. I don't think anyone here would be opposed to that, though some might say, with reason, that he's not worth paying much attention.

I would question the either/or here. Doesn't it take both personal consumption choices AND feedback to companies and government? If I stop buying carbon-intensive widgets, that sends a ping up the supply chain. If I write Congress and ask for better widget regulations that's also a signal. Why not do both, when both consumption choices and letters can send a message? I know some say political action is the better path, and it can be, but I have also seen grassroots consumer movements (combined with letters to companies letting them know what's happening) effect change. I guess I'm suggesting that we don't have to feel individually powerless, that we can make choices every day and let others see us making them, without waiting on some politician to start listening.

Many people can be influencers - they take measures to reduce their impact, do it with grace and skill, and then those around them gain a more positive view. The trick is to implement lifestyle changes that work, that you can stick with. People have been aware of the basic lifestyle changes (bike, walk, reuse, recycle, eat lower on the food chain, wear woolens and turn down thermostat, etc) for decades -- what helps is to actually have people in their peer group who "just do it. " Step one: own an umbrella. 🙂

I live on the edge of wildfire country, where there is some thinning. I find the argument for clearing some growth fairly persuasive, given that it does yield a western woodland closer to its natural state. Also, when you do have a wildfire the pre-cleared forest doesn't burn as fiercely and some tree species survive external charring quite well (trees that would be wiped out if the fire were fueled by more crowded foliage) and make a comeback. The moisture retention approach, while it may be valid in some Eastern forests, wouldn't seem to apply here where there is less foliage density and conditions are dryer, but it is a complex issue which can't be mastered reading a couple articles. Thinning can be done badly, and that's been evident here, as when crews leave slash piles that dry out and then just go up like blowtorches when a spark lands on them. A related issue that's come up here in the western USA is that some areas may be become dryer and hotter to the degree they no longer support a woodland ecosystem and give way to grasslands and scrub. The only pluses to that will be it decreases the fire danger in those areas (grassfires are far more manageable) and the higher albedo of grassland will have a cooling effect. But it also means land that retains less carbon, a shift which we really don't need right now.

Can I call you a taxi?

Would I call them a term whose meaning I only vaguely understand if at all? No. What does neurodivergent mean? To your example, I'd call someone at the top of the scale in extroversion "very outgoing. " Or "quite gregarious. "

Going to ask for an abstract of your paper before reading. A concise description of your main points. Would be very helpful.

But your hypothetical situation cannot map precisely onto the real world. In a world where human fertility went off a cliff in 1950 and population growth flatlined (which in population biology means that fertility rates actually slumped a couple decades before) , there would have been all sorts of societal changes that we might not expect. For example, the southwestern US and west coast might still have seen mass migrations due to the attractive climate and scenery, and so would still be afflicted with rapid-growth ills - water shortages, smoggy urban basins like LA, offshore drilling leaks, etc. And where people are more sparse, there may have been less regulation of some human industry and agriculture, thus enabling more casual and irresponsible dumping, leaking, polluting. Nations that are now moving away from coal might, if they had one third their present populations and proportionate energy demands, more easily shrug off the downsides and drag feet on green policymaking. It's also possible that without any population growth for the last 70 years, there would have been less push towards innovations that were partly in response to population pressures. We might be using more arable land per person, employing fewer agricultural advances and using water and chemicals less efficiently. And, given the demographics of non-growing populations, people might be on average more conservative and less willing to try new ideas. Your alternate world could be dangerously complacent.

More food for thought than I can digest or address. On the whole issue of harassing horndogs at parties, I fall back on the great Dr. Asimov: "Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent." I don't live in 1870's Deadwood, or wherever Koti lives, so my view is through a certain lens of time and geography. Perhaps I've been fortunate to live in parts of the US where a woman, encountering an unwanted Romeo, can simply respond to any offer with "that's flattering but I'm not sure my husband/boyfriend would go for it, " or something equally gently deflating. Deflations allow the miscreant to slink away without provoking an escalation (like, say, a beer tossed in the face might) and neatly underline the situation of being in an exclusive relationship. Competent people appeal to reason and give reality checks, they don't need to punch faces in. I have to wonder how many actual fights, starting from this situation, were theatrical displays that carried both men farther along than they wished. A lot of "masculinity" is performative. That was my experience with a friend who called my then-GF a bitch. I invited him outside, we proceeded bravely out into the yard, then as we lost an audience we realized neither wanted a fight, and so he apologized and we shook hands.