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upthorn
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There is nothing, anywhere, ever, that involves two or more people, that isn't politics.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
KennyMan666
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Warp wrote:
It appears my wish was not fulfilled.
The irony is that your post in the bundle topic is what triggered this entire fork of discussion, so, you really only have yourself to blame at this point.
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KennyMan666 wrote:
Warp wrote:
It appears my wish was not fulfilled.
The irony is that your post in the bundle topic is what triggered this entire fork of discussion, so, you really only have yourself to blame at this point.
Is it like a reverse psychology thing? Asking for no politics causes political discussion. The person who asks for no politics is to be blamed for the politics.
Mitjitsu
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KennyMan666 wrote:
Warp wrote:
It appears my wish was not fulfilled.
The irony is that your post in the bundle topic is what triggered this entire fork of discussion, so, you really only have yourself to blame at this point.
That's like a person with anger management issues blaming everyone else for triggering them.
CoolHandMike
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Think of it like trolling for a response
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upthorn
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Warp wrote:
KennyMan666 wrote:
Warp wrote:
It appears my wish was not fulfilled.
The irony is that your post in the bundle topic is what triggered this entire fork of discussion, so, you really only have yourself to blame at this point.
Is it like a reverse psychology thing? Asking for no politics causes political discussion. The person who asks for no politics is to be blamed for the politics.
Saying "let's not discuss politics" implicitly declares certain topics as "political" and certain topics as "not political." In general, what communities consider "political" is anything that the community doesn't have a consensus on. One things that most communities (including this one) don't have a consensus on is which topics are "political" and which topics aren't. Therefore, "let's not discuss politics" is, itself, a political statement that will almost always begin a politics discussion. This is exactly what happened.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
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upthorn wrote:
Saying "let's not discuss politics" implicitly declares certain topics as "political" and certain topics as "not political."
Actually it doesn't do it implicitly. It does it quite explicitly, because it's true. Some topics are political and some aren't. And everybody understood perfectly what I was referring to in this case.
Therefore, "let's not discuss politics" is, itself, a political statement
That doesn't make much sense. That's like saying that "let's not discuss math" is a mathematical statement.
Bloopiero
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Warp wrote:
Therefore, "let's not discuss politics" is, itself, a political statement
That doesn't make much sense. That's like saying that "let's not discuss math" is a mathematical statement.
You completely ignored the whole definition he gave of what politics means within a community, which justifies how that is, in fact, a political statement. Comparing it to math is a bad analogy.
Whale eat again
upthorn
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Warp wrote:
upthorn wrote:
Saying "let's not discuss politics" implicitly declares certain topics as "political" and certain topics as "not political."
Actually it doesn't do it implicitly. It does it quite explicitly, because it's true. Some topics are political and some aren't. And everybody understood perfectly what I was referring to in this case.
Yes. It was perfectly clear that you would prefer that we avoid discussing certain categories of facts that are uncomfortable to think about for a certain segment of our userbase. So uncomfortable, in fact, that a sub-group of those who find them uncomfortable will refuse to accept that these are facts, and instead loudly decry their validity.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Patashu
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Posts: 4000
Warp wrote:
KennyMan666 wrote:
Warp wrote:
It appears my wish was not fulfilled.
The irony is that your post in the bundle topic is what triggered this entire fork of discussion, so, you really only have yourself to blame at this point.
Is it like a reverse psychology thing? Asking for no politics causes political discussion. The person who asks for no politics is to be blamed for the politics.
Saying 'blame' makes it sound like you did something wrong, bad, evil. I don't think you did - I'm fine with some politics discussion. But you're the one who really really hates seeing it at any costs, so pointing out the pattern that you yourself sow makes sense to me ;> You also didn't have to come into this thread, it was nicely sectioned off just so Warp wouldn't have to read about politics.
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endrift
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We're not even talking about politics at this point. We're talking about the politics of politics. It's too meta.
EZGames69
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And now we’re talking about people talking about politics being upset that people are talking about politics when they weren’t talking about politics before. Pretty much sums up American politics alright.
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Patashu
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Just the ability to talk about politics has drastic consequences, you know!
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Mitjitsu
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Now we're having a discussion complaining about people complaining about other people complaining about having a political discussion. Now this is getting interesting...
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upthorn wrote:
Yes. It was perfectly clear that you would prefer that we avoid discussing certain categories of facts that are uncomfortable to think about for a certain segment of our userbase. So uncomfortable, in fact, that a sub-group of those who find them uncomfortable will refuse to accept that these are facts, and instead loudly decry their validity.
This is exactly the kind of rhetoric I didn't want to see. I know for a fact that this particular political topic will eventually devolve into exactly this. Soon direct namecalling and accusations will start to be thrown around. I suggest this topic be locked before it devolves even further, because it will, with 100% certainty.
Patashu
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Feel free to direct your namecalling and accusations at me, once you find something to namecall/accuse me of.
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Patashu wrote:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6080222/ When it comes to the police killing civilians, they don't MAJORITY kill black people, but they do DISPROPORTIONATELY kill black people (at a higher % than the number of black people in the overal population).
The authors themselves point out that the NVDRS database they used "is not nationally representative; information is only available for the 17 states funded at the time." There are 50 states in the U.S., but the population is not spread evenly among them, so it's not clear from the article what percentage of the U.S. population was covered by the states in the database. The "disproportionately" part comes from the rate ratio in Table 4, I assume. What I wonder is why the authors didn't calculate or report a confidence interval to show that the ratio is statistically significant. Based on a quick Web search, there's at least one piece of software that can do that.
Patashu wrote:
Also, can we please decriminalize most drug usage? I can't believe we're still locking people up for marijuana in 2020.
Since you said "most" rather than "all," what criteria would you use to decide which ones to decriminalize versus to keep illegal?
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CoolHandMike
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[politics is too hot right now, removing]
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upthorn
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Dacicus wrote:
Patashu wrote:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6080222/ When it comes to the police killing civilians, they don't MAJORITY kill black people, but they do DISPROPORTIONATELY kill black people (at a higher % than the number of black people in the overal population).
The authors themselves point out that the NVDRS database they used "is not nationally representative; information is only available for the 17 states funded at the time." There are 50 states in the U.S., but the population is not spread evenly among them, so it's not clear from the article what percentage of the U.S. population was covered by the states in the database.
There is no particular reason to suspect that the proportions would be better in states that don't participate in the police violence recording and reporting program. If anything, there's an argument to be made that police in states that participate in the NVDRS database program have an additional incentive to try to make the statistics look good over police in states that do not participate. With a quick google search, I found that the states participating as of 2009 (the starting period of that survey study) were MD, MA, NJ, OR, SC, VA, AK, CO, GA, NC, OK, RI, WI, KY, NM, UT, MI, and OH. The study states it was a survey of 17 states, which means one of these was not included. However, this is a very diverse group of states, in terms of population statistics, and political ideologies, so I believe that, even excluding any given one of them it would still be fair to take it as a representative sample of the nation as a whole.
The "disproportionately" part comes from the rate ratio in Table 4, I assume. What I wonder is why the authors didn't calculate or report a confidence interval to show that the ratio is statistically significant.
Because anyone trained in statistics can tell you immediately, without performing any calculations, that for a sample size of 812, a rate ratio of 2.8 is statistically significant, and therefore the authors felt no need to defend that part of their conclusion.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Patashu
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Dacicus wrote:
Since you said "most" rather than "all," what criteria would you use to decide which ones to decriminalize versus to keep illegal?
I'm not an expert in this field, but I know that Marijuana is objectively less dangerous to use than cigarettes and alcohol; the main reason why it's illegal is historical reasons, not due to evidence based reasoning (look up the War on Drugs). Other drugs would need to be decided on a case-by-case basis; this is the obvious 'there is really no excuse anymore' one.
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upthorn
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I am generally in favor of decriminalization of all drugs, but I can see arguments for keeping criminal penalties for drugs like, say bath salts, or PCP which have a tendency to incite extremely violent behavior in their users.
How fleeting are all human passions compared with the massive continuity of ducks.
Memory
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I felt I had to say something about this, not as a staff, but as a person and may not be reflective of staff as a whole. I am not black, but I am trans, a similarly persecuted group. Often times things that would be considered no brainers for rights are treated as a political issue for my people, and the same is true of black people. Just recently it was attempted to be made acceptable for healthcare workers to deny service to people on the basis of transgender status. Black people are often unfairly treated as well in today's society, with a focus on police brutality in recent news. As such I have empathy for them. It is true that human rights as a whole are a political issue, but I don't think that really gives one the privilege to simply ignore them and those that are in suffering. I can definitely understand one wanting a break from constantly hearing about it if one needs to recharge their batteries, but I still think at the end of the day, it's worth fighting for. Black lives matter, and I do not see why users would need to be shielded from this fact.
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fsvgm777
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CoolHandMike wrote:
Rights also vary by country to country according to their history and cultures. This is by nature political.
Exactly this. I live in a country where for instance, gay marriage is legal and the process of changing one's gender in official documents is just a simple administrative process, which also mentions one does not have to undergo any medical treatment in order to write up the letter. These are ultimately political decisions, as they are laws which first went through the parliament. These rights are virtually non-existent in other countries (in fact, in most countries, you risk getting imprisoned). Regarding Black Lives Matter: I think it is important to note that every country has a racism issue, even if it's not as overt as in the USA. Earlier in June, I came across this article about racism in Luxembourg. The fact a fairly high amount (for my standards, at least) of people of colour are getting or feel discriminated one way or another in this country is honest to god disheartening. Nobody should be or feel discriminated based solely on their skin colour, and that should not just be my opinion, but common sense. Therefore, to quote Memory:
Memory wrote:
Black lives matter, and I do not see why users would need to be shielded from this fact.
I've written this post not as a staff member, but as a person and thus may not be reflective of the staff as a whole.
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TiKevin83
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Posting this here because I don't want to distract from any debate needed on the discussion thread about political topics in submission text: There are some obvious ways to point out that the US is uniquely oppressive in its handling of criminal justice issues, mainly that we have a significantly larger share of our population in jail than most other countries, and there do seem to be components of this with racial implications, eg criminalizing marijuana differently from tobacco. I also appreciate the argument that people should be willing to say "black lives matter" as opposed to an insistence that "all lives matter" as "all lives matter" distracts attention from the immediate issue with respect to disparate policing. However, at the same time I find it impossible to support most of the organizations trying to affect change on the issue. The organization using the name "Black Lives Matter" seems to believe that they are oppressed mainly by police killings and "Western nuclear family" structure, and uses the word comrade as if they support communism (which is not helped by frequent use in current left-wing movements of the black power fist, which is itself tied up in socialism). This evinces extreme political opinions unrelated to the problem at hand, some of which are even directly contributory to the problem itself (there is scholarship from virtually every angle in conservative. liberal, and academic sources that the nuclear family is a strong predictor of children staying out of crime). Separately, the rate of state killings of citizens in the US is much less unique than incarceration rates. While it's certainly unreasonable to argue that our level of incarceration is necessary to maintain our unique prosperity, the same is not quite as obvious for shootings. There's a very straightforward argument that our 2nd Amendment uniquely protects us from government overreach, leading to a need for police to carry guns in equity with private citizens, which in turn leads to a necessarily higher rate of police shootings. I think that's a good assessment of the present situation but there are solid counterexamples of the value of gun protections like Sandy Hook. Additionally, there is good evidence that using the power of the federal government to require private actors to treat people equitably across various protected class distinctions (race, gender, sexuality, etc.) has had a negative effect on real-world equity. The common example cited is the effect the Americans with Disabilities Act had on the employment rate of people with disabilities. This is similar to the concept that affirmative action in US higher education has had net negative effects on educational attainment. Further reading on this subject is available from minds like Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and (less seriously) Charles Barkley. All this to say, there is plenty of reason for people who support black lives in America to disagree with the political goals espoused by protest movements like capital letters "Black Lives Matter."
Mitjitsu
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I didn't want to hijack Upthorn's submission just for the sake of pointing out parts that I took issue with. Yes, I agree issues surrounding policing aren't relegated to black people. However, people need to accept they're disproportional poor and more prone to committing crime than other groups. Leading to more confrontations with the police. Where either they or the officers involved do something which leads to them getting brutalised or killed. As for this part
Police have responded to peaceable protests of their excessive use of force by committing literal war crimes against the protesters, driving their cars into peaceful crowds, and refusing to arrest other people who attempt to murder these protesters.
You'll likely find wrong doing from both police and protesters in this instance. If you're going to get into calling responses war crimes. That's going to take some serious evidence. Not just conformation biases.
Massive reforms are necessary, and they cannot happen soon enough.
Can't disagree with that other than who be making the reforms, and what ulterior motives they may have. Up until then most of my disagreements were minor, but here's where I took the main issue with.
In issues like this, refusal to speak is implicit support of the status quo. Avoiding comment is equivalent to saying "nothing about this needs to change." There is not much that I have the power to do regarding these issues, but I do have the power to say: Black Lives Matter, and Silence is Violence.
There's good reasons not to say anything. There's plenty of forums I've stayed well clear of saying anything, because of how unreasonable in general the people who frequent these places are. The fact I'm posting on here about it means I have a great deal more respect for the average user who posts here. All Lives Matter, and the only way evil can thrive is for good people to do nothing.
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