iNow

I like helping students, especially those willing to ask hard questions and explore answers from different sources. Well done! I will say, however, that I'm extremely resistant to clicking links from strangers online, and I'm even more resistant to sharing personal information like email address when I do. If you can ask your questions here in this thread, I'd be happy to answer them and you have my permission to transfer them to your centralized response tracker. For example, I feel that CRISPR is super cool, with tons of opportunity to make our lives better and cure disease, but also with tons of risk to be used by bad people and used by people who wish to have designer children where they choose their height, eye color, and related other traits. This could result in problems culturally, but also with disease if we're too similar to one another in the future and a bad virus hits. Like I said, I will reply here (or potentially to an anonymous survey), however, if you ask me to click your link and fill in details associated with me in a non-anonymous way, I won't be doing that... and I imagine I'm not the only one who will avoid your form for these same reasons. Summarized: Happy to help, but not in the way you're asking. Good luck, either way!

Fairly certain he meant the US heading that way IN ADDITION to those others, not that the US was somehow alone in this path. The US is, however, not historically known for it which is part of the issue being discussed.

Benghazi!!

They didn’t underestimate death rates in the US so much as they underestimated idiocy, ignorance, and intransigence. Much like car accidents still kill people despite the introduction of seatbelts. Obviously, seatbelts don’t work and shouldn’t be worn at all. That’s just common sense right there. We should also get rid of airbags and crumple zones and stop lights while we’re at it. If it’s not perfect, it’s not needed… that’s what I always say. 🙄

Maybe for you… I realized this way back on page 1! 😎

Sadly, the side believing and spreading these lies also tends to be the side that stockpiles guns by the hundreds and ammunition by the hundreds of thousands.

Indeed, just supercharged and on steroids now with focussed help from nefarious actors with state funding and new digital tools and “dials” allowing marionette level control over what people see and hear.

Completely agree. Nice post, overall. We need MORE debate and pushback on ideas, not less. Sadly, when said pushback and criticism comes, it's too often cast aside and dismissed as over-sensitive cancel culture. Those buzzwords like "cancel culture" are, in fact, being consistently themselves used to cancel cultural conversations. Thought for food...

The far right with their simple scapegoats and caricatured versions of freedom are certainly on the rise everywhere, and this is quite common historically during times of economic stress and public health issues like pandemics. Basically, this is all very shocking and sad, but hardly surprising.

It’s about time you caught up to us. It snowed here 2 days ago on Friday. I was just glad it didn’t heil… erm, I mean, hail. History doesn’t always repeat, but it often rhymes.

This is a big question. It’s in the US Congress especially the House, but more so it’s something tens of millions of voters seem to actually want and desire… though they’d never admit and maybe even aren’t self-aware enough to acknowledge this is how they feel. It’s coming through with how they vote, and how they support specific candidates with these tendencies, and how they attack anyone who votes differently than them online and IRL… complete with making death threats to those who voted to improve infrastructure. It’s happening at school board meetings and in neighborhoods and on apps like Nextdoor where neighbors are supposed to be posting about lemonade stands and selling raffle tickets. We see it in voting restrictions across the states and in the way they’re redrawing voting maps with redistricting and gerrymandering at the heart. We see it more formally in statehouses, yes, and in local legislatures, but these authoritarian / strong man / “be damned with the law so long as we have more power than the other team” mindsets are everywhere and spreading. It’s hard to summarize my point in a simple post, but I keep thinking how Hitler came to office via popular election, too. People voted for him, and the US feels more and more like that, too.

Especially, but not only, there. Yes.

I appreciate and applaud your optimism, but can’t get onboard with your verb being in the last tense there

It’s a matter of precision and accurate framing. We don’t “have evidence to support” that death is the end. It’s the most likely valid explanation, site, but we don’t have evidence FOR it so much as we absolutely lack ANY evidence whatsoever despite thousands of years of seeking that death is NOT the end… that ANYTHING at all happens or persists in any meaningful way once our biological functions cease. Perhaps a bit pedantic, but is more precise. Similarly, we don’t have evidence that flying unicorns don’t exist, we just lack evidence that they really do exist in anything more than fantasy books and children's imaginations.

In context of this thread, not social backlash more broadly. For the sake of argument, I was simply saying… “Fine. The professors loss of job is now relevant. Okay. We’ll go with that. I don’t really think it is, but whatever. It’s still just ONE and not thousands of people losing their job over pronoun problems.” I was NOT arguing that social backlash doesn’t happen. Is this clear now, or shall I repeat myself 17 more times over the next 10 pages of thread before we can move to the next point?

I should add… MULTIPLE others have pointed out these same things, often in more detail and with more rigor than I did. I framed the above as I did since so many replies have focused on targeting me personally. I’m reminded of an old saying in politics: When the law is on your side, pound the law. When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. If neither the facts or law are on your side, pound the table… or on the character and integrity of me as iNow, in this case.

I’m not the one who claimed people are being thrown in jail for using the wrong pronouns. I’m not the one who failed to provide even a single example of this actually happening. I’m not the one who keeps misrepresenting this law despite repeated correction. I’m not the one who claimed people are being involuntarily terminated from their jobs for using the wrong pronouns. I’m not the one who claimed a lesbian professor was involuntarily terminated for her lack of respectful pronoun use. I’m not the one who introduced this professor into the discussion when asked to provide even a single example of someone actually getting fired. I’m not the one who kept claiming she was involuntarily terminated for her views even after being repeatedly corrected that she resigned. She quit. I AM the one who suggested that this example was irrelevant to our discussion. I AM the one who said this example wasn’t of equivalent scale to the issues being faced by the trans community even if it was somehow conceded as relevant. I AM the one who CORRECTLY framed her situation as resigning voluntarily as a result of the social backlash she faced for sticking her foot into her mouth. And now… I am the one saying that providing EVEN MORE examples of people facing social backlash on college campuses (not facing jail, not facing termination from employment, just some not positive social feedback for their approach to OTHER issues which aren’t even tangentially related to trans pronouns) has fuck all to do with this conversation. I hope this clarifies, and eagerly await on the edge of my seat with bated breath seeing how you will mischaracterize your next set of examples and where the goalposts get moved to next time.

Indeed. It’s like those Republicans who voted to impeach Trump are being cancelled. And now this week those republicans who voted for historically bipartisan infrastructure are being cancelled. They’re also getting threats of having their lives cancelled for voting in the affirmative. Death threats. The ultimate cancel culture.

Yes. You’re, of course, correct. The last 32 pages of thread have been focused laser tight on what people think of Jordan Petersons views and NOBODY has been misrepresenting a law, saying people would go to jail for using wrong pronouns, and that people are losing jobs en masse despite a dearth of examples… nope. Totally correct. That conversation never happened. /sarcasm

Which makes them worth F-all / exactly zero in this particular thread then, wouldn’t you say? Also, why are you conflating “social backlash” with “termination” and jail?

Of course it is, and the plural of anecdote is anecdotes, not evidence. Worse, in this thread we don’t even have plural anecdotes. We have ONE… one that is only tenuously… sorta kinda somewhat if you squint real hard and tilt your head sideways like a confused dog… connected. It’s an example of a professor one time somewhere in one place once resigning due to social backlash when she stuck her foot in her mouth. So, we’re left wondering… where are all of these examples of cultural repression and retaliation that’s been so passionately decried and detested throughout this thread? The examples given have all this far been unrelated garbage red herrings stacked like Jenga blocks on top of strawmanesque misrepresentations of a law.

To be clear, I very much can and do. I’m primarily pushing back on the actual root cause and scale. You gave one single anecdote of one single person just one single time being held accountable for their speech and actions, and I’m pushing back on the consistently false claim that they were fired. They were not. They resigned, and that remains true even if I stipulate that social pressures likely motivated that choice. Sadly, it keeps getting presented as something it’s not. They were NOT fired. They were NOT victimized by the law underlying this entire discussion. I and others here, however, are speaking of millions upon millions of people globally who every single day of their lives for decades upon decades are being targeted for violence and discrimination more broadly simply for being themselves… for expressing who they are authentically in public… for asking to be called Janet instead of James. I’m pushing back on this ridiculous suggestion of equivalence between the two. The equivalence being asserted is plainly false, especially since you keep misrepresenting your counter example as being something it actually is not.

You’re willing to accept that I am wrong and biased? Wow, how magnanimous of you. 😂 Whatever. Good luck with that.

I’m perfectly willing to be convinced that I am wrong or mistaken. I am always open to the idea that maybe I’m being inconsistent and even unfair. I will readily acknowledge fault and error when it’s highlighted for me. Posts like this one from you, however, will lead to none of those outcomes. Posts like this serve only to further deteriorate my already limited and continuously eroded respect for you. Posts like this cause me only to reinforce my view of you as a childish poster seemingly incapable of making cogent coherent points without resorting to personal barbs and emotional outbursts. Did your favorite lesbian professor quit or was she fired? Nothing I said was inaccurate. Let’s start there, perhaps. What about me saying this objectively true statement led you to call me blind, biased, and hypocritical, because I do not think those words mean what you think they mean. Like, within the last 2 hours, or just today? Maybe you mean how many have I done since last week? Please clarify.