Ironically, The author sounds super right wing in her critique of the right wing. She’s using incredibly conservative and right wing reasoning throughout this essay. She says she’s a liberal but her reasoning reveals that actually she’s conservative. She wants to conserve access to the public sphere, not dole it out liberally. The author is conservative, not liberal.
Can you elaborate? I do not see any of the textbook talking points or perceptions attributed (usually in a biased way, such as yours) to either extreme. Why the need to extrapolate some ideology when the topic is clearly defined? This increasinly is what modern bigotry looks like.
I’m not extrapolating anything. The crux of her argument is a desire to CONSERVE resources (access to the public sphere), not dole them out liberally. She is quite literally making a conservative argument because her entire position is based on CONSERVING resources instead of doling them out liberally. Thus it’s extremely hard/impossible to understand her position because she is actually adopting the same emotional stance (wanting to conserve resources) as the people she claims to oppose who also want to conserve resources. The liberal argument would be to allow anyone into the public sphere but she is arguing AGAINST that. Which is a fundamentally conservative argument.
I’m not extrapolating an ideology I’m calling a spade a spade and a conservative argument a conservative argument.
It's a very interesting conundrum and highlights the invalid stereotype of conservative = right-wing and liberal = left-wing.
Avoiding using the left/right terms because it simplifies a hugely complex set of behaviours, I think part of the problem is that the current global state of confected fear is pushing the average-joe to blaming all the ills of the world on 'the unfamiliar' (those who are superficially different by skin colour, language, culture, religion etc.).
The Bannons and Trumps of this world both encourage that fear and play up to the blaming of "the unfamiliar" because it is popular (populism?), and if nothing else, politics is a popularity contest.
Moderate folks aren't bombastic. People that believe in a cooperative society aren't bombastic. People that are scared of "an invasion of the unfamiliar" feel they need to be bombastic as "identity self-defence" - this is correctly categorised as 'conservative' because it's seen as a conservation of the status quo.
The biggest, loudest people seem to be those with the most to gain from a fearful, compartmentalised, under-educated society, and because of the loudness and bombast and overall 'theatre' that goes along with it, these people get more air-play than is representative of their numbers, but also more influence than is representative of their numbers - popularity plays (sells) in media, which flows into political influence.
The author is requesting better forms of discourse that don't play into the hands of bombast, which is essentially not possible, so the author then moves to a restriction of the air-play these loud minorities receive, which is what radiantswirl is saying, not incorrectly, is a conservative position. It's also just as impossible as improving the style of discourse.
What I see as the solution is that the moderates need to adopt the same strategy of theatre. It feels 'spinge-tingly icky' to suggest it, like marketing cigarettes and sugar to children, but if your message isn't getting through, then your methods of communication must change.
Climate Change, as a nicely divisive example. Would you believe Exxon (cue images of oil slick covered penguins), or BP (cue images of oil volcano in the Gulf of New Mexico), or would you believe what 90% of scientists are saying (cue images of clean, white laboratories with test tubes of bright colours and people with glasses in lab coats with clip boards).
>What I see as the solution is that the moderates need to adopt the same strategy of theatre. It feels 'spinge-tingly icky' to suggest it, like marketing cigarettes and sugar to children, but if your message isn't getting through, then your methods of communication must change.
I think this change is happening already, the press surrounding the migrant detention centers is definitely an example of an increased level of showmanship on the part of the Democrats. I basically think the democrats are playing a word game but the republicans are playing an image game, and images are more powerful than words. When Hilary talks about “our democracy,” no one understands because democracy is a complex idea that is impossible to fully grasp —- she’s playing a word game. Meanwhile trump is showing off all the women with big tits that he’s fucked. If the dems want to win they need to have a lot more big breasted women on stage and a lot less talk of “OUR DEMOCRACY!” which is the equivalent of a nonsense concept because it means different things to everyone. Basically they need to stop playing word games and start playing image games because images win elections and words just confuse people. Why do you think trump uses tiny words lol, he knows no normies care about words, they just care about the image he presents.
while this is one of the worse political commentaries i've read, you have a point in that the education system in the US has been so mishandled for so long a significant number of people can't critically analyse language
No dude. It’s not the fault of the people for failing to “critically analyze language”. It’s the fault of the language for being so counterproductively nebulous and hard to understand.
Democracy is a nebulous concept. There’s millions of different variations of it. No one cares about “our democracy” because it literally has no actual meaning that anyone can point to. But a lot of people care about big tits.
Your blaming the US education system is just laughable because “democracy” is actually the one thing my teachers DID spend way too much time trying to explain to our class — yet still, literally no one understood it enough to form an emotional attachment to it, because it’s an inherently nebulous concept and impossible to emotionally attach to.
Your claiming that 20+ years of teachers earnestly trying to explain democracy to earnest students and failing miserably is somehow a result of the educational system and not a fault of the language itself is a massive LOL. The explanation of democracy is literally the ONE thing our school system does well, and still it’s not enough — because it’s literally not possible to explain democracy in such a way that people become emotionally attached to it. It’s just not a stirring concept. The concept of democracy does not stir up emotions in anyone except the most out-of-touch philosophers who only understand it abstractly anyway. Democracy does not stir up emotions.
The level to which you are removing Vanessa’s agency in your attempts to relieve her of responsibility is frankly sexist.
Don’t be sexist. She has agency. She has responsibility. She made her bed and now she lies in it. People with your paternalistic condescending thought process are ultimately what holds people like Vanessa back in society in the first place. Don’t take away her agency. She’s responsible for any decisions she’s made, good or bad. And 99% of her 16yr old female peers know that having a kid at 16 is a “ bad decision.” It’s literally sexist as fuck to suggest she was somehow stupid enough or irresponsible enough not to know what she was getting into. Vanessa KNEW she was making a “bad decision” and she CHOSE to make it anyway. Stop pretending like she didn’t choose it. Stop pretending like she has no agency. Stop being sexist. Thank you
I found this article to have zero value and zero cogent information because he boils the whole thing down to “gut check” (instinct — no real information here) plus “dealbreakers” (a nebulous category that he makes clear is always changing for everyone so there’s not really any useful info there either).
This reads like a long hemming and hawing written by some dude who probably shouldn’t marry his partner but he’s trying to convince himself it’s a good idea and seek validation for his bad decision by writing a long abstract post justifying it.
Pro tip to the author, if your relationship prompts you to write a long article justifying your decision-making process about whether or not to marry your partner, then your partner has failed the gut check and you shouldn’t marry them.
4/10 article, interesting concepts but zero actionable or new info that isn’t already common/universal knowledge in western societies.
It’s also just plain weird that he would write an article that long which is clearly based on his life experiences but not share any of his specific life experiences or anything about him. Maybe he thinks subtracting the self from the article makes it “more universally applicable,” but really his decision not to include any info about his personal relationship history just makes it less relatable and thus FAR less applicable to anyone.
But they also are a cop out to not solve the real problem.
If you give tuition money to a few poor kids via a non profit, you don’t solve the college debt and education accessibility problem, but it makes people who did it feel better.
Basically, it isn't. The theory that everyone should do a little bit is based on the idea that if 1000 people each solve 0.1% of the problem then we solve 100% of the problem. Which in general isn't a bad idea.
The problem comes when somebody tries to sell it with bad math. Because then you have a hundred million people each solving one trillionth of the problem, which accomplishes effectively nothing. And worse than nothing, because then you have a hundred million people each thinking they've done their part and no further action is required, even though no one has made the slightest dent in the actual problem.
I watched the video but I didn't notice any argument against the practice, unless I synthesize "one should always feel bad about participating in consumerism", is that it?
If "diverse" != mirroring the demographics of one's home country, then what does diverse even mean? What could possibly be a better metric than that? Mirroring the demographics of the world at large? If so, why would that be better?
It seems like a completely unattainable standard to me. Can you give me an example of a situation in which "genuine diversity of intellectual approach" has been a net positive for an organization, rather than a divisive detriment to morale?
IMO if your organization has a "genuine diversity of intellectual approach" that is truly genuine, then you will soon no longer have an organization — you will have two different organizations, each ideologically homogenous but definitely "genuinely different in intellectual approach" from one another.
Your response seems to be suggesting that having two different approaches precludes the possibility of two people listening to each other and reaching a sensible agreement?
I do not suggest that, because obviously people can listen to each other and reach sensible agreements. But if that's possible then how "genuine" is their intellectual difference in the first place?
My question is this: what defines an organization other than a shared intellectual approach? Borders? Dare I say... Walls?
I'm just saying that a "shared intellectual approach" is literally the definition of an organization to me, unless you're gonna say that walls/borders/exclusion are what defines an organization. So it makes no sense to insist on NOT sharing an intellectual approach because in that instance you'd quickly have two separate organizations.
What I'm really asking for tho is a single example of "genuine intellectual diversity" being beneficial as opposed to merely being divisive and demoralizing. Can you provide an example?
When I google the definition of 'organization' this is the 1st one that comes up: "an organized group of people with a particular purpose, such as a business or government department." People can have different ways of fulfilling the same purpose.
As for an example: I'm currently developing a fairly large open-source software package for numerical analysis. I do the majority of the coding but every few weeks I discuss the latest developments with a co-worker and my supervisor. They often disagree with the way I have done certain things (intellectual diversity) but after (sometimes lengthy but productive) discussion we almost always end up with greatly improved software design that we are all happy with. Sometimes they compromise or come round to my way of thinking, sometimes its the other way around.
You sound very logical and well-meaning and seem to be a good person in general, so I have to resist my initial urge to turn this comment thread into a flame war, but:
1.) a shared "purpose" to me is literally the same as a "Shared intellectual approach" -- purpose is a synonym of what I was trying to say.
2.) I strongly disagree that "disagreeing with the way you do certain things within the frames/boundaries of pre-agreed purposes and projects" is what anyone is trying to say when they talk about "intellectual diversity." If your definition of intellectual diversity (just inferring here so lmk if I'm wrong) is "disagreeing about how a job should be done," then literally every company on Earth is diverse by that metric, so its not a particularly useful metric IMO.
3.) IMO when people refer to "intellectual diversity" they are referring to having strongly held and opposing viewpoints about issues that are much larger than "how this job should be done." The viewpoints that qualify as "intellectually diverse" in all discussions of the concept I've read are referring to politics and/or religion.
I respect that you have an effective working process with diverse and strong viewpoints about software, but I think that strongly opposing viewpoints about software do not meet the commonly-held criteria for "intellectual diversity." Strongly-held opposing viewpoints about religion and politics do.
Compared to politics and religion, It's easy and fun for you and your coworkers to strongly disagree about software development. When you guys strongly disagree about that topic, the final outcome (as you just described) is positive: Everyone learns new things and your product gets better.
But it's extremely difficult and potentially way less fun for you and your co-workers to strongly disagree about politics and/or religion while still having a positive final outcome for all involved.
My question is this: do you know anyone who can? Because if anyone can provide me with a link to an article/blog post about "intellectual diversity" as it seems to be defined in common parlance -- I.e. "group members holding strongly opposing viewpoints about politics and/or religion" -- let me know because I'd be fascinated to read about it.
My curiousity is this: I wonder if intellectually diverse organizations share characteristics and if there was a way to map all organizations and find out which ones are "intellectually diverse" and what commonalities they share. Some part of me wonders if CrossFit and yoga would be the most intellectually diverse but the other part thinks maybe they're self-selecting for some tribal/religious/political qualities that I'm not even aware of. Would be cool to find out :)
Yes. Now that the prestige value of the blue checkmark has already been torpedoed by their various verification fiascos, it makes perfect sense to make the blue checkmark available to everyone because it would also solve a lot of their problems in the advertising department.
Right now clicks on Twitter ads are worth very little because most of the clicks come from fake accounts. But imagine how much clients would pay for "verified clicks" -- clicks from verified accounts.
IMO they should make their ad sales a tier-based cost-per-click model with clicks from verified accounts selling for higher amounts than clicks from non-verified accounts. If theyre smart they'll open up a third tier above "verified" for the twitter-endorsed superstars which will have prestige value again (now that the blue checkmark has none). Maybe a green checkmark would work. Naturally they could sell an ad click from a green checkmark account for even more than an ad click from a blue-checkmark regular ol' verified account.
If your moral worldview doesn't equate those effected by abortion as valueless clumps of cells,
The moral scale of legalized abortion dwarfs that of modern wars
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Between 1945 and 1992, there were 149 major wars, killing more than 23 million people.
...
Recent developments in warfare have significantly heightened the dangers for children. During the last decade, it is estimated (and these figures, while specific, are necessarily orders of magnitude) that child victims have included:
2 million killed;
4-5 million disabled;
12 million left homeless;
more than 1 million orphaned or separated from their parents;
some 10 million psychologically traumatized.4
I'm guessing that's not your moral world view, but for the sake of understanding the people you disagree with, you should realize that they view legalized abortion as one of the great humanitarian crises of our time, which easily outweighs most other issues that we squabble about. (And yeah, justifies teaming up with otherwise unsavory bedfellows)
Thank you for posting this. I'm pretty pro-choice for emotional reasons, but it's still extremely fascinating to me to learn the pro-life arguments (even if only to bolster my pro-choice views).
