Phi for All

I meant that you're generalizing about financial compensation for ethnic wrongs always being a bad thing.

And you're generalizing in the other case. Is financial compensation for past ethnic wrong in every case? Or is this being dismissed because it seems like "fighting fire with fire"? But it shouldn't ONLY be that. The US passed the Civil Liberties Act in 1988 under Reagan, and in 1990 representatives of Bush I's administration acknowledged that the US was wrong to put Japanese-Americans in internment camps at the beginning of WWII, vowed to spend funds to educate Americans about this wrong, and gave checks for $20,000 to survivors. Unfortunately, later administrations reallocated the funding for educating students about the internment, but in general it was seen as a successful example of ethnic reparations.

Yuk! I think you need to refocus. Basing any hypothesis (what you have is NOT a theory) on observing yourself is very risky. Your own biases need to be compensated for, and that's not something you can do well on your own, by definition.

I'm confusing nothing (except you, perhaps). But the white folks were given preferential treatment for a long time. You can end that practice to give equal opportunity to all, but you've done nothing to make it up to the people of color who suffered while the practice existed. You're just saying, "Oooops, you caught us, that was wrong, we'll stop doing this now that we've benefited heavily from it!" This has been the white solution for a loooooooong time. Apologize afterwards, but do nothing to make amends. This is about regulations that kept POC from benefiting from the same system white people do. Single-family zoning was regulated to segregate POC from the white communities, and home ownership means a huge difference in net worth. White regulators turned housing in the US into a de jure system that's basically unconstitutional, according to the 5th, 13th, and 14th amendments. Even if you change the zoning laws, you still have generations of POC who were unfairly discriminated against. I'm unsure why you think some kind of reparation is reverse discrimination, but what I do know is that your stance ensures NOTHING will be done. Let me ask you this. If it's found that a company has been discriminating against black employees by not paying them the same as their equally skilled white employees, is it discriminatory in your view to compensate them? IOW, if this company paid their black employees $30K per year for five years while the white folks made $50K, do you think it would be reverse discrimination to pay those black employees $70K per year for the next five years to compensate them? With reparations, ALL the employees make $500K in 10 years. I don't agree with this premise. The only thing the typical solutions do is to stop a specific predatory tactic, without considering the damage done by those tactics. If a farmer destroys a field by planting the same crop every year without rotating them, the solution isn't to just stop planting that crop. You need to also do what you can to make the soil fertile enough for all the things you want to grow. You mean like modern forestry, or fighting oil well fires? Are you arguing against the use of controlled burns and backfiring? Do you question the methodology of explosives to put out an oil well fire? Sorry, but this argument falls flat for me. I understand that you're really saying, "Sorry, I know I inadvertently helped burn you, but two wrongs don't make a right, so I think it's wrong for you to burn me back", but it just comes off as "You caught me, let's move on and I won't do it again" to my ears.

Just so we're clear, a possible solution like no-interest government loans for people who've been denied loans due to racist practices, are you saying it's a non starter because it gives preferential treatment, so you claim it's fighting racism with racism? If so, it would seem anything that's done to correct past mistakes is a non starter for you. You just want to keep doing the same things, sailing the same direction, and that's what will help, do I have this right?

What would you do to rule out genetic factors?

This distorts the definitions and makes them worthless to me. It sounds like you're trying to tell me an infant can be born with the ability to drive precisely. I can't use that for anything and still call it reasoning. You keep yawning on and on about this, but nobody here is focused on making money from these discussions. Stop using this excuse not to support your arguments fully. Let's use the methodology you praise so highly and stop making this personal. Nobody is talking about you. We're discussing your ideas, and testing them against what we observe. Sounds like a political problem, something you and science have in common. Here's why I don't agree with your definitions. It's ALL belief, what we choose to take in as knowledge. It's what that belief is based on that matters. Is it based on blind faith because someone you trust a lot says so? Is it based on wishful thinking on our part, something we'd like very much to be true but can't quite explain to anyone else? Or is the belief based on trust, because you taken the painstaking, plodding steps of the scientific method in order to be as certain as possible that you have the best supported explanation to believe in? I also think you're fooling yourself about self-evident vs nonsense. Can you show me something self-evident that doesn't involve your opinion or judgement? Can you be objective about self-evident knowledge?

! Moderator Note This is NOT a GDPR issue, and an open appeal doesn't seem to be the correct course either. Staff is working with the opening poster behind the scenes to solve this particular problem. Thread closed.

Last I heard, Admins were going to change the account name, but leave the posts up so the threads make sense. Seems to be the best compromise. The name is obviously important and personal, and we don't want the others who participated to look silly, and we can stand by our commitment not to delete posts made in good faith.

We have an extremely small subset of humans who feel non-typical enough about their gender at birth to change it, and go through all that entails (definitely not a "whim" event). Once they've done it, they just want some acceptance, but instead their lives are threatened regularly, and they're blocked from participating in many aspects of life, and one aspect they particularly enjoy. My morals won't let me come down on the side that wants to persecute these humans for the temerity of wanting to sport. I'm not a sports fan any more, but, to me, this fuss about transgenders really makes sports fans seem weak and fearful and hateful. It just reinforces the big bully jock stereotype for me. Systemic problems often seem to get solved by overcorrection and radical action. We've been off course for quite a while, so just steering a bit left isn't going to work. We may need to go hard a-port for a ways to get where we want to go. That's if y'all want to go to the same place, where our equal rights are guaranteed and actually in writing, and humans are respected more for themselves than how well they fit our expectations.

Must the tokens all fit within the perimeter, or can they be almost halfway over the line? Trying to eliminate any variables.

Is moving one token with another allowed as long as they don't overlap, or does "place" mean the token is fixed once it's on the table?

! Moderator Note Unfortunately, you haven't been able to explain your idea adequately to others, and you haven't addressed the obvious concerns expressed through discussion. You need to be able to elevate this beyond your own incredulity that we can't see your vision as well as you do. You're obviously uninterested in meeting the criteria we have for making assertions like yours in the Speculations section, so this thread is closed. Do NOT bring this concept up again, since you can't be bothered to support it. It's certainly not enlightening to talk about it with you.

I don't agree. In its present state indigenous farming can't feed the whole world, but can you state with authority that it can't "grow" to sustain today's world population? In fact, with global warming and water scarcity threatening the monocrop European fields that need to be rotated and pesticided and whatnot in order to produce big, bland vegetables, indigenous farming could hold the key to keeping us fed. https://www.iied.org/indigenous-peoples-food-systems-hold-key-feeding-humanity White male Europeans set up the present system to make it easier to harvest, where most indigenous farming is aimed at producing superior products. MigL, they've used indigenous farming in Italy to raise the feed for the special cows they milk to get the aged Parmigiano Reggiano that gets the Protected Designation of Origin stamp on every round. It's a centuries old process, and the cheese is flat-out amazing.

Innate abilities are something you're born with. Can you support this statement with examples? Critical thinking requires quite a bit of learning, so how can you be born with something you have to learn? You'll gain something useful when you realize your own confirmation bias against science that seems to work for us very well is holding you back. You've become blinded by the idea that scientists are "hidebound" and "stuck in their ways", so you don't see the actual steep progress curve that's been happening for the last 150 years or so. While there is some truth that profit often eclipses reasoned solutions, I hope you can see the problem with you demanding scientists follow the scientific method while simultaneously claiming you can only accept data that you personally deem true. Your cognitive biases (all our cognitive biases) need to be removed and that's just not happening.

Can you give me some examples of "the 'extreme' side of woke" that aren't overreactions or misinterpretations or pure whataboutism? Because this is a pretty straightforward fascist tactic, trying to argue obliquely that examples of extremism invalidate any attempts to solve problems like this reasonably. And "creating more problems than it solves" also needs to be supported and clarified. Who is it creating more problems for? Whose problems are being solved at a lesser rate because there are extreme ends to the spectrum of solutions to discriminatory behavior? Lately I'm struck by the pervasiveness of the white European perspective in the US, and how much I've ignored it most of my life. I've been learning about Native American culture in general and in my area, and I'm astonished by the inaccuracies in what I was taught. I was told they were primitives who followed the buffalo, but the truth is they nurtured the land and created abundance without plows and European methods. The buffalo followed the natives, because the natives created seas of grasses for them to crop. They were far from primitive. Australia's natives did the same thing, and after almost ruining parts of Oz with European farming methods, indigenous farming is making a comeback. I don't think I'm being extreme or over-sensitive when it comes to correcting some of the bad information I've received in my life. And thanks to those helping me work on it through discussion.

This isn't the strong argument you seem to think it is. For one, it's wrong. Theories are constantly being changed and updated to represent our best current explanations. And for two, some things are too simple and elegant to change very much, especially when they work so well. You can come up with all kinds of new ideas for a door leading into a house, but in the end a solid panel in a frame with hinges, locks, and a knob is a hard concept to top. Golly, we've been using the same technology for centuries!

Well, those weren't the goalposts I'd aimed for originally. My statement about dogs was based on being able to save a human life through the sacrifice of my dog. You've just Strawmanned into meaninglessness. Never mind. Kidding? Sorry, I don't get it. Lots of white people in the US don't appreciate that we've been getting our hands dirty when it comes to discrimination against people of color just by participating in processes that actively promote it. It's not something that's been placed upon us, but rather a consequence of our own behavior. I mentioned white racial tendencies as being particularly relevant to the topic, and you replied with "Don't you think all people have racial tendencies...?" It just seemed like the same argument.

Are you saying "All lives matter" right after I said "Black lives matter?" Then why is my "assumption" bold? It's a better perspective than claiming you've been "branded", which is wrong AND racially insensitive.

It would be pretty cool, but magnetic attraction drops off steeply with distance, much more than with gravity, which also gets weaker the farther away it is. Magnets strong enough to reach across travel distances would surely attract other magnetic materials too.

I've loved every dog I ever had, and they all wanted for nothing, and were considered part of the family. But none of them were EVER loved as I love my child. As much as it would bring me terrible grief, I'd sacrifice any dog for my child if it were required. Sorry if it seems callous, but I'd sacrifice the best of my dogs to save the life of any human if I knew it would work. When it comes to human life that I have a chance to save, I wouldn't stop to ask about their ethics. I may regret it later if I found out they were a shithead, but I wouldn't be OK with letting a person die to save my dog's life. Branding? I guarantee you that you have many racist tendencies if you're white in the US, simply because it's part of the structure of the country. It's up to all of us to remove as many as we can if we want equity for our citizenry. "Branding" implies something that can't be removed that others have placed upon you against your will. Maybe you should think of racism as more of a stain that YOU got on yourself by interacting with racists, but you can wash it off if you put a little work into it.

If you're looking to make some money, this is a huge distraction from offering upbeat philosophy. Just charge a reasonable fee that's accepted before you bring on the pith. Otherwise every encounter is a negotiation aimed at judging you.