randomc

Stop that abstracting. I have a problem with female bosses. I'm going to have some, what do i do?

I've had bosses from several demographics, and the one i couldn't click with was the female kurd, and it wasn't because she was kurdish. So what do you think of me?

you intuition is reasonably good, Gees. i've found neuroskeptic's blog informative on the "brainporn" side of things, mostly because he denies ,most of it which i find reasuaring. Broaching the personal philsophy side of it, i don't find traditional "sciency" sounding explanations any more convincing than the religious alternatives.... thought and emotion... is that just a question of the amount of time available? dunno free will persists terminally, though.

Institutions that represent the weak are subject to the same nepotistic influences they defend against, and so constant reform, if not disintegration and rebirth, of these institutions is essential. This is what the trend toward coalition in European political parties represents - a regrouping in part triggered by the collapse of aggressive Communism, but probably timely anyway. The American system doesn't seem to be following this trend, so, is this a problem? Icebreaker.

i'm trying to tap the experience of the people who run the site TBH...

I can't find anything i feel like disagreeing with in what your saying.... i'll have to reread and come back to you... This OK, the premise is ambiguous, but the concept of British Values is expounded, and usually by the left interested press look you, as if it's a pivotal issue in this economic region, as if it's what people other than information-priveledged intelligentsiaare concerned with. And it's not what they are concerned with, they know who/what they are regardless of alcohol, or mushroom content. So it's not in fact my ambiguous gauntlet. i don't feel like that's the way it is. The question of British Values has been proscribed to me, i'm merely trying to work out what to do with it. I agree with you that it needn't mean very much, but it does. This seems to require a response but i'm not sure what to do with it. What are you trying to say? And are you comfortable with the US left as an entity separate from comparable (i.e. other western) entities?

well, exactly

I don't know, i think the pink floyd view is pessimistic. Buddihism would probably do well in Britain! The reluctance to believe, is how i would characterise the ideal i'll call "British", even though i think it's an engine of general fuckoffness centered somewhere around Birmingham, and extending far beyond this country's borders. Seems like in the US, if you're left you're statist left, as far as the broad swipe of values is concerned.

Ok, i suppose we're talking about state and national character and the extent to which these ideals still intersect. I think they do still do quite a bit (nationalism), and i don't know what you think because you're being all standoffish

go on then stringjunky, your alternative values or your alternative state

I suppose my conjecture has to be that people do modify their behaviour based on the rep they get and see others get. So, yeah in most of the science specific subforums the rep system is pretty straightforward. Refer to OP re the other subforums

The gauntlet of British Values has been repeatedly thrown down over the last few years in my country, and it's a bugger to define without referring to globally held values. Comes down to stuborness and familiarity I suppose, but as far as i'm concerned this is an admirably British trait - we have to change what we're used to because of WHAT zeitgeist silly theory? We'll change, but stop trying to make us believe in stuff - whatever British Values is, that's not it. We're the lazy, pissed offspring of Descartes and Plato in our philosophy, and the progeny of a bunch of grumpy Scottish empiricists in our approach to life. Just fuck off. So then, US values? How do you US lefties on this site hold yourselves apart?

How does the reputation system influence how discussions progress, and how easily swayed are they by moderation (modification of rep points removed is not transparent, fro eg)

I get the impression polls are used to influence voter choices. Does the experience of moderating/administrating Sfn's reputation system generalise to what political strategists might get up to? (at all/ even a bit/ to what extent)? This is very much an experience question hence the subforum.

It makes sense that polygamy would set up a selection differential on whatever genes contribute to social intelligence. The epidemiology of disorders related to social intelligence such as schizophrenia and autism bare this out to some extent - groups with recent polygamous ancestry show a higher incidence of schizophrenia and associated disorders, while groups with recent monomagous ancestry show a higher incidence of autism and adhd. Skin colour doesn't objectively define race, but i suppose race could be defined in terms of near ancestry, so the definition relates allele frequencies to the geographical location of several generations of a persons ancestry. Summat like that.

Do you mean socially conservative normative leadership, or what are you talking about? If so, the biggest challenge to conservatism in general is the scale and pace of technological change at the moment. There's really no reason to suppose structures and institutions that have served us in the past will be any good in the future, and moreover, if you look at periods of history in which massive social change occured you'll find technology as the catalyst. The printing press and the enlightenment period for e.g. Since we're really on a near vertical incline on the sort of overall historical sociopolitical rollercoaster, the desrability of change is the wrong conversation. The conservative/progressive dichotomy is obsolete, the only question left in the game is what kind of change do you want? So anyway, i don't think you can derive knowledge useful to use in civilisation building by looking at a single tradition such as Lutheran or Swedish generally, rather you have to look at as much of history as possible and try to work out what differnt traditions have in common.

If it were written in a POV style, like song of ice and fire series, people could take a character each to develop. Maybe also their own individual sub-plots within the master-plot, although that might be cause rows.

I'm off-topic so this might get deleted, but... this sort of the situation is very difficult to prove. That's actually the basic justification for my concerns.

Maybe if you were less fixated on your vagina you'd comprehend that i was doubting the ability of men to control themselves when sex is cheap just as much as women. A lot of people elevate societal and moral norms above their own reasoning. That's just the way it is, education ain't going to fix it.

Apparently there was no widespread consensus amongst christian evangelicals that life begins at conception until the 1960's/70's: http://religion.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/30/my-take-when-evangelicals-were-pro-choice/ The correspondence between the sexual revolution of that time and the sudden unity and change of position of evangelicals is noteworthy. .............................. OK, i take your position to be that resistance to the establishment of more liberal normative attitudes to sex necessarily represents a desire to control women. Is that right? ... I have to acknowledge that you (and Ringer) are clearly right in saying that difficulties in defining consent don't allow the conclusion that the difference between sex and sex-crime is a grey area. The difference is almost always stark in law. But...the policing of sex-crime is logistically difficult, as can be seen in the ratio of reported crimes to successful prosecutions across many countries. My point was that very tolerant normative attitudes to sex can (need not, but can) lead to the logistics of policing sex crime becoming even more difficult. Why? If the normative attitude to sex takes the null position that there isn't any harm, it becomes still more difficult for victims to speak out. Sexual sophistication is a fairly universal indicator of status, in fact we can take an example from this very thread - you identify me as a sexually unsophisticated person in your subtly ridiculing statement... i would suggest a prevalence of such sentiments in a community would act as a disincentive to victims of sex crimes to speak out. In cases such as those in the ceop white paper i linked, the victims may not even feel that they are victims until many years later. Further, sex being considered normatively harmless hands exploiters a powerful tool to manipulate both their victims and their own moral reasoning. So, i think the encouragement of tolerant attitudes to sex can create (in the UK, are creating) problems that need to be addressed. Closing down the discussion with a myopic emotionally fueled rant is not helpful.

Good piece by Peter Singer on the future of the sanctity of life debate in abortion and wider contexts; http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/200509--.htm

The link i provided should really make that a bit more plausible for you...BTW, middle aged to me is early thirties through to maybe fifty or thereabouts. I didn't say or mean to imply old men. But no, ican't support my anecdote. That's why i provided the link that describes similar situations across the UK.

Fine, i retract my assertion that jumping on the sex-positive bandwagon is moronic. My opinion remains that there exist negative consequences that are very difficult to deal with, and so i question the wisdom of encouraging it.

you got me

I don't think i can do that, moontanman, because it doesn't discuss sex positive ideals