haroldbkny
3mo ago
I'd say absolutely not. But you must know that that argument applies to us as decendents of European settlers, too. @shakenvac was bringing up an argument that the amount of time and generations that pass do not matter.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
Hah yes. The simple counter-counter argument would be, do the people who stole the land originally (as the natives of America did) really have much of a leg to stand on when they tell us we shouldn't have stolen it from them?
haroldbkny
3mo ago
"He's Welsh, but I'm still on stolen land after hundreds of years? How does that work?"
Huh, that's interesting. I never thought about that before. How does that work?
Moreover, why have I been anti-leftist and interested in anti-leftist modes of thought for a decade and I've never heard this argument before, and why does no one else seem to see that sort of obvious double speak when examining leftist stances on immigration vs leftist stances on colonialism?
I wouldn't mind hearing pro and anti arguments for that particular argument. I mean, it is a "gotcha", but it sounds to me like a thought provoking gotcha.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
This has panned out to be an interesting subportion of the thread. I'm trying to imagine showing this to my wife, and I think an interesting question just occurred to me: where would a feminist land on this question of women's vs men's strength?
On the one hand, they want to believe that women and men can go toe-to-toe in boxing and a woman would have an equal chance. On the other hand, they want us to believe that women are in constant terror at all times that a man might hurt her. And I remember conversations on this very forum where people have been indicating that in certain situations women have no choice but to willingly go along with whatever a man wants her to do in a 1 on 1 setting, because there's a small chance he could get violent if she objected at all.
The correct responses from the Bio-pilled segment of the political sector should probably still be accelerationism.
I understand where you're coming from, and I hope you're right. But the black pilled part of me makes me think that accelerationism will just accelerate the denial. That's what I tend to see.
When I wrote The Science doesn't support the bigots who think XY chromosomes makes someone a man, it was paraphrased from several people I saw writing about this. I can't actually ask these people what actual biology and science support the notion that being a woman is distinct from the presence of XY chromosomes, and how that was determined by these biologists and scientists for fear of outing myself as a heretic and being yelled at by people who probably don't really want to explain it anyhow. I really am curious, because it seems if I'm being charitable, "being a woman" is a social state that they're arguing for definitionally. And definitions like that are neither provable by biological science nor disputable. As Scott says:
I can’t argue with this. No, literally, I can’t argue with this. There’s no disputing the definitions of words. If you say that “racism” is a rare species of nocturnal bird native to New Guinea which feeds upon morning dew and the dreams of young children, then all I can do is point out that the dictionary and common usage both disagree with you. And the sources I cited above have already admitted that “the dictionary is wrong” and “no one uses the word racism correctly”.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
I kinda felt that's why that guy waited until days before the election to leak the "grab em by the pussy" footage. But Trump ended up winning anyway.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
Are there any generally applicable lessons here?
People only care about the most recent interesting things to happen, and completely forget about the second to most recent thing. But that's nothing new.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
JK Rowling has jumped into the Imane Khalif controversy with both feet, outright stating she's a man, which is always good for turning up the heat on a constantly simmering issue.
Ah, I didn't realize that. That might account for why more people are paying attention to this issue.
The culture war seemed subdued in my bubble for a few months, but picked up majorly recently. Oddly enough, the cause (mostly) doesn't seem to be the attempted presidential assassination, the quick Democratic party shifts, the ramping up of tensions in the middle east, or the black female presidential candidate, but the Olympics. Color me surprised.
I see non-stop posting currently about "The Science doesn't support the bigots who think XY chromosomes makes someone a man", "why do they care more about a woman competing in woman's boxing than they do about a literal child rapist competing?", "the people complaining about a woman getting punched in the face by another woman are the same people who don't bat an eye at men beating up women outside of the Olympics". There seems to have been some really high-profile culture war controversies in this Olympics. I really doubt there's more fodder for controversy in the Olympics in general than in everyday life, so why is everyone picking up their keyboards to go vanquish the enemy all of a sudden?
haroldbkny
3mo ago
Yes. The length and pacing did astound me, too. I remembered wanting to fly and needing the magic feather as a crutch, and learning to overcome it, as being the main crux of the movie. It turns out the feather and flying were introduced as plot points in the last 6 or 7 minutes of the movie! And Dumbo overcame his need for the feather in the last 3 minutes of the movie. They really moved things in a way modern movies don't, and I've also felt this about other Disney movies from that era that I'm currently rewatching with my family right now.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
Yeah, I've never seen Song of the South, but this is making me wonder if it deserves the criticism it gets. I know little about it, but is the problem once again mostly that it depicts black people acting like black people of the time?
For example, you'll never see certain episodes of the original broadcast of Tom and Jerry because many of those episodes feature a sassy black maid who doesn't take any shit from Tom. Why was that deemed worthy to never be broadcast again? I don't know. I guess because we are not allowed to ever see a black maid on TV. In certain broadcasts, the black maid was even replaced with a white teenage girl. That's representation for you!
haroldbkny
3mo ago
I just watched the 1941 Dumbo movie with my family. It's probably the first time I've seen it in about 35 years. One thing that stood out to me were the crow characters. All my adult life I've heard about how horrible and racist they were, and Disney is censoring them to this day in multiple ways. But upon watching them, I really have a hard time understanding what may be considered to be racist about them.
They are obvious caricatures of black people, no doubt. They talk in AAVE, they scat, they banter, they dance in stereotypically black ways (albeit circa 1941). But I'm not certain that most leftists these days would consider any of that to be a bad thing. I think the modern day leftist would probably call it "representation"; it's highlighting and drawing attention to race, and inserting it into a movie that would otherwise be without any particular spotlight on race. Most of the actors voicing the crows were actually black, also.
So why does this have such a bad reputation? Maybe because it was demonized back in a day when it was bad to notice any race at all, and those reputations are stickier than the taboos themselves? Maybe because one of the voice actors was white? But I chalk this up as another data point in the perhaps beaten to death category of "modern day leftist mores around race look very similar to the racism of yesteryear".
I have no clue what I'm talking about with this stuff, I've never been attacked or felt particularly unsafe where I live. If I'd been attacked multiple times, I'd probably move away, start carrying mace, find different routes to take, start driving instead of walking, start walking around in groups for safety, idk.
I assume you've spoken with the police about it and they told you they can't do anything? If you want to try to change your neighborhood instead of just changing your habits, maybe I'd start by finding out about existing town halls, and see if anything is already being done about it. Do you sense other people have been impacted like you have? If nothing is already being done, then speak at your town hall and try to show people this is a big problem. Try to make some sort of council through your town hall that can make suggestions to the police about where they should be policing. Or maybe start a neighborhood watch? If none of that works, then find some other people who have been affected as you have and start a viral campaign to showcase the problem and try to humiliate the local police, show everyone they're not doing their jobs and normal people are suffering.
I don't think anyone would actually recommend going Charles Bronson on them.
Recently I have been getting more and more fed up with the failure of my local government to provide basic safety - which is, after all, reasonably speaking the most important purpose of government.
What I know is that I subjectively feel that the level of street crime now is too high compared to what I would wish it to be
Can you clarify what exactly you're seeking regarding safety that you're not getting now? Is this impacting your life directly, and if so, how?
Edit: looks like you added more detail in an edit, saying that you were attacked directly, so feel free to disregard. But I guess more info about those attacks might be useful. What was the context, what was the motive, what was the outcome, etc?
haroldbkny
3mo ago
but it likely cost Dems the 2016 election
I wasn't fully tuned in back then (nor am I now), but I don't remember the Dems going high back then. "Basket of deplorables" comes to mind. But maybe my perception was skewed because back then I was listening to a lot of conservative outrage bait.
I guess. I mean, we could talk about what it means to "force" someone to do something. Is a woman forced if she chooses to have an abortion because she knows she can't make ends meet, even if she did have child support from the father? Can someone be forced simply by the circumstances of their life? Anyone can choose to have a baby or not regardless of their lot in life. I don't like that we are less willing to ascribe agency to women than men. I want to be consistent, but no one else wants to be.
Also, regarding responsibility, I don't see why we should make it illegal for someone to do something simply because it is irresponsible.
But I also wanted to add that I sense that my original argument of "feminists just don't get the parallel between LPS and abortion rights" probably doesn't apply to you, since you are likely a traditionalist (?). I'm basing this assumption on that I don't believe that a feminist would generally argue about laws being made based on whether they are responsible actions or not.
Most feminists tend to argue for abortion from the basis of "human rights", whatever that may mean. And I see no reason why the human right for a man to decide his own destiny is any less important than for a woman to decide her own destiny.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
There's nothing that says a woman wouldn't be able to choose to get an abortion after the legal paternal surrender, knowing that the man is choosing to not be involved. The man surrenders, and then the woman can then choose what she wants to do accordingly. If she chooses to have the baby at that point, knowing that there's no father, then she would be the one choosing to do the irresponsible act.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
The thing I really can't stand is that I've had hours long debates with feminists about legal paternal surrender, and they'll continue to employee the exact mirror-image rhetoric of "women should keep their legs shut", and they just don't get it (in my experiences). It just feels wrong to them to allow financial abortion, and they won't budge no matter how much one points out how much they sound like the traditionalists on the other side that they decry so much.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
Fair enough. How far would you take this? We could introduce distinctions between reflexive and non-reflexive possessive pronouns, so that in the expression "John spoke to his brother and his wife", we would know whether the wife belongs to John or his brother. What about clusivity? Or reintroducing noun classes/genders for easier referent-tracking? There's no shortage of cool features we could add if we were really interested in making language "as effective as possible".
Omg, I would love a way to distinguish between reflexive and non-reflexive possessive pronouns. I really face that problem all the time when I'm trying to write extremely succinct reports of technical details to senior leadership. And the only way around the problem is to make it wordy-er. And in the worst, case, you didn't even think to distinguish up front, and you realize after the email was sent that it's confusing or could have multiple meanings.
I'm generally in favor of useful features.
Should we reintroduce "thou" so it's possible to unambiguously differentiate between singular and plural second-person pronouns? (Ironically enough, most hardcore prescriptivists would frown on people using "y'all" instead of "you" when referring to multiple people, even though it's strictly more effective at conveying meaning!)
As someone who uses "y'all" and someone who believes in making language more effective, yes, I'd be in strong favor of people starting to say "thou" again.
Maybe we should condense the inflections of "To be" so that instead of saying "I am", "You are" and so on we just say "I is" "You is" etc.
That wouldn't make English more effective, it'd just make it easier to learn.
haroldbkny
3mo ago
While I don't know the history of "ask" vs "aks", I do also tend to find a lot of stuff like this in descriptive linguistic spaces, which is something that annoys me that I did not include in my original post.
Often when I see someone committing a prescriptive faux pas by questioning certain misuses of language, I see many people rush in to tell that person they're wrong.
Don't you know that use of the singular "they" in English is correct and ancient? Shakespeare used to use the singular "they". The same goes for use of "literally" as an emphasis. And we've always been at war with Eastasia.
I'm not personally equipped to argue back at these people, because I don't know enough of linguistic history, but something just feels like it could be wrong, like they may be misrepresenting history. But I have no way of knowing.
Maybe it was used, but was it "proper"? Must we defend any language simply because it was used at some point in history?
haroldbkny
3mo ago
Linguistics is descriptive, not prescriptive, doesn’t mean that there’s no such a thing as a grammarian.
Yes, you're right. I had forgotten, but the term my college acquaintances used to call me was a prescriptive gramarian when they wanted to tell me to die in a fire. So my main point should be that I think it's okay to be a prescriptive gramarian.
I would probably agree with you, though certain things that muddy the meaning of language make my blood boil (like "literally").
To me, you don't sound like a fence sitter, because IME, non prescriptivists are ironically very prescriptive about others being non-prescriptive.
Take a look at this reddit thread for an example. Anyone defending the concept of a correctness of language seems to have to use a lot of apologetics up front, and the replies to these people tend to be "no, youre wrong".
How do people here land on the subject of "prescriptive linguistics"? I personally find myself getting irritated at people putting down prescriptive linguistics. For the past 10 years, anyone who tells someone they're not using certain words correctly gets shut down as a prescriptive linguist. I'm reminded of an SSC post
Calling someone a rent-seeker is sort of an economist’s way of telling them to die in a fire
I feel like the same applies for "prescriptive linguistics", it's basically a cudgel, a way of telling someone to die in a fire.
Charitably, people justify this argument by saying that linguistics is a descriptive science, so there's no place to be prescriptive. In their mind, linguistics is meant to just describe how people use language, not tell people how to use it.
Uncharitably, I think this sounds like a general push towards post modernism, a pushback on the notion that there's any correct way to do anything. They're not just against prescriptive linguists, they're against prescriptive anything.
In an anti-prescriptivist mindset, someone may use prescriptive linguistics as a cudgel to shut down alternate ways of expression, and (of course) enforce colonial and white supremecist standards on unprivileged minorities. This especially comes up in conversations about double negatives, which are commonly used in various low-class English variants, like ebonics.
I might push back on anti-prescriptivists by saying, many people who try to enforce grammar rules not a linguistic scientists, but people who are trying to enforce sense in their worlds. Therefore, they're not prescriptive linguists; they're not even linguists! They're people living in the world and using language as a tool, and they want that tool to be as effective as possible.
It's not their sacred duty to simply understand language no matter what, so don't call them a prescriptive linguist. When I tell someone not to use the word "literally" as emphasis, it's because I'm finding that the word literally is less useful than it used to be, and I want to combat that. Nowadays there is no word that accurately works in as an antonym for "figuratively"; the meaning is muddled and unclear because people have watered down the definition of literally to be something else.
I also sense there may be political aspects to the use of the word "prescriptive linguistics". relating to Noam Chomsky's history in the field and his political affiliations, but I don't know enough about that to comment. I'm interested if anyone here has info on this.
Well, this brings up one interesting counter argument (which I don't particularly agree with). When I argue with people about land acknowledgements, and bring up that I think that they're stupid because every land is stolen land, the only interesting argument I heard in return is that since the native Americans's descents are still around, it's important to give land acknowledgements at events for native Americans as a sign of respect. Basically respect for the living. However, the people the native Americans had long ago slaughtered to get their land are long gone (as are the neanderthals), so there's no reason to acknowledge their previous ownership.
To me this sounds like they're saying we only need to apologize for the past if the descendants of the victims are still around. This quickly gets to a repugnant conclusion, which is that in some ways it's better to have killed off an entire population then leave any descendents, because if there are no descendents, there's no need to apologize.
I think this also sounds similar to another argument, which is that the only reason white people are held so guilty for slave owning is because previous slave owning populations sterilized the slaves, or the slaves otherwise went extinct before the modern era. This makes it sound like the real "sin" of white people which makes them distinct from other slave owning populations, is that they freed the slaves, and gave them enough resources that their descendents lived to the modern age. Once again, no descendents, no guilt. And white people are demonized as "literally the worst", when in fact they were one of the few groups of people noble enough to end slavery.
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