quote:

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Originally posted by Sad:
"Now, there's a creative way of discrediting someone: Deny their existence!"

Well, perhaps. Sorry. Also could be taken as high tribute. Socrates/Locke in _Enders Game_

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quote:

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Originally posted by Saintonge:
But I haven't expressed the position that the races should be kept apart...

Now I am confused. What is a "classist"?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mindy Viridis:
By "classist" I meant something parallel to the other discrimination-related "isms" -- racism, sexism, etc. (Since moving to the USA I have also heard of "ageism", which apparently means discrimination against the elderly.) In other words, discrimination based on economic or social class, which does seem relevant here. As you say, you aren't advocating racial segregation, but it sounds to me that you wouldn't appreciate having members of the "underclass" (whatever color they might be) moving into your neighborhood, since then the neighborhood would deteriorate. This isn't necessarily to say that you would try to drive them away, but still, preferring your middle-class neighborhood to remain middle-class does have a certain parallel to the Afrikaaner who wants his white neighborhood to stay white (especially since in .za the blacks are pretty much all "underclass").

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Now I'm not completely sure what you mean by 'discrimination.' I think you mean, would I want the drug dealers, whores, vandals, thieves, casually violent, kids who beat up honor students for studying too hard, and general 'trash' moving in? HELL, NO! And if they did, I'd either move at once or try to drive them out. If that is 'classism,' then I'll proudly plead guilty.

(Martin Meyer, in a book about real estate and housing, said of something he'd witnessed, approx. "One the East side of the park, an old white lady is playing a peaceful game of golf. On the West side, an old black lady is washing her steps, while being harrassed by some black juvenile deliquents. I don't know what the answer to the old black ladies harrassement problem is, but I know what it isn't -- it isn't moving the old black lady, and the black delinquents into the old white lady's neighborhood." Exactly. The old black lady is welcome on my block, but keep the thugs out.)

I see now what you mean by the 'parellel' to me and the Afrikaaners, but I also see the difference. They don't want non-whites around, regardless of behavior, and will lie about their reasons. I don't want the underclass around, regardless of color, but I don't lie about my reasons.

quote:

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Saintonge:{definition of evil}
1.Morally bad or wrong; wicked (dictionary.com)

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quote:

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Mindy:
You're begging the question, though. Who defines what is "morally bad"? I don't think dictionary.com has a conclusive answer to that.

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No one has to define it, any more than someone has to define 'gravity,' or 'electric charge.' Evil is a fact of nature. One can study the phenomenon, try to dissect it's details, ignore it, pretend it doesn't exist, and it doesn't matter. It's still there (this is a fundamental difference between us).

quote:

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Saintonge:
John Douglas, a profiler for the FBI, commented on those "driven" to kidnap, rape, and murder women that he'd never heard of one who couldn't control those impulses when a police officer was watching him.

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quote:

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That misses the point. A machine may accept various kinds of input that affect its workings. The awareness of a policeman's presence is one such input.

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You appear to be using 'compulsive' in a sense that is new to me. A 'compulsive' who can control themself is different from one with free choice in what way?

quote:

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Saintonge:
Btw, what do you think should be done about these people who you believe can't control their own acts?

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quote:

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Mindy:
I don't have an answer for that. The traditional answers used to be death or exile (which of course is how Australia and parts of the USA got started). These days, civilized countries don't use capital punishment, and there's nowhere to exile criminals to (well, once we start colonizing other planets, maybe they can go to Mars or some Jovian moon, but until then...). Rehabilitation doesn't seem theoretically impossible, but its history is not encouraging; it's hard to "fix" something when you don't really know what's broken, and we still don't understand the brain or the mind very well.

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"Civilized?" Who defines that, and why is it important?

Hypotheticals: an industrial robot suddenly kills someone, and it turns out that this is due to a non-repairable fault in its makeup. Would you hesitate to have it destroyed? A dog is rabid, do you agonize over shooting it? Neither is morally culpable, both are dangerous to people around them? If you truly believe that violence and random acts of nature are morally equivalent, why should killing a murderer (or even a habitual litterer) bother you?

Perhaps you see now why I don't take this view of evil seriously.

quote:

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Originally posted by Astrid:

Sad: �"Nobody suggested you should be placed on your own island."

Scroll up and read Tau Zero's last post.

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I think the appropriate thing to do with the academics who push this junk onto ill-informed and gullible students is to give the entire school of thought an island or other area to run, from the power, water and sewer services up through manufacturing and everything else. Let them demonstrate how their wonderful ideology works in practice... and demand that they either prove it or repudiate it before being allowed back to the real world.

I also didn't say that Astrid was a member of the loonie left, I just said that she'd fit in really well with them.� Since then she has self-identified with them, so I think it's fair to group her in with them.

Oh, Astrid:� just because a small group of radical revisionists wants to use a word to mean a particular thing, it doesn't mean that you'll actually communicate if you use the word that way except among that group of radicals.� Note that their re-definition fits the spirit of Newspeak (the alteration of language to make it difficult to think or communicate ideas which the revisionists desire to suppress), while the dictionary definitions do not.

Note on minority racism:� Even by the leftie definition, blacks in the USA can be racist.� In many large cities, racial "minorities" constitute voting majorities and have taken the reins of the government.� In many of these cities (Detroit, Washington DC) the results have been... mixed.� Once in power some minority pols have decided to polarize the population along racial lines, which has driven out the non-minority population and businesses.� This has caused profound damage to everyone, the minorities included (it's hard to be a full participant in society when most of the companies that offer decent jobs have moved out of town because the municipality is hostile and abusive).� In Los Angeles, I understand that the problem is now black-against-hispanic racism, because historical preferences and quotas (even more recently abolished, IIRC) favored blacks while the population of the city is increasingly Latino.� Funny, none of the black power structure wanted to play fair with the Latinos once they had theirs.� They had the power, so isn't that racism?

quote:

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Originally posted by Tau Zero:
Caught Astrid lying... again.

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Well, let's change a bit of the emphasis and see exactly who's culpable for what:

quote:

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[QUOTE]Originally posted by Astrid:

Sad: �"Nobody suggested you should be placed on your own island."

[b]Scroll up and read Tau Zero's last post.

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I think the appropriate thing to do with the academics who push this junk onto ill-informed and gullible students is to give the entire school of thought an island or other area to run, from the power, water and sewer services up through manufacturing and everything else. Let them demonstrate how their wonderful ideology works in practice... and demand that they either prove it or repudiate it before being allowed back to the real world.

quote:

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I also didn't say that Astrid was a member of the loonie left, I just said that she'd fit in really well with them.� Since then she has self-identified with them, so I think it's fair to group her in with them.

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quote:

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Oh, Astrid:� just because a small group of radical revisionists wants to use a word to mean a particular thing, it doesn't mean that you'll actually communicate if you use the word that way except among that group of radicals.

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You seem to understand what I mean just fine. So does everyone else on this thread. Even your own next paragraph refutes you.

quote:

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� Note that their re-definition fits the spirit of Newspeak (the alteration of language to make it difficult to think or communicate ideas which the revisionists desire to suppress), while the dictionary definitions do not.

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Nonsense on stilts. First, it is perfectly possible to think and communicate the ideas marked out by "discrimination", "racial biology" "apartheid" and the older word "racialism" without hijacking the word "racism". Secondly, the dictionary (.com) definitions quite clearly *do* make it much more difficult to discuss the more interesting concept of racism-as-oppression-and-related-to-the-white-male-power-structure. I daresay I've read more Orwell than you have.

quote:

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Originally posted by Astrid Leuer:
Oh great. So I'm ....

And all this, without making a *single* post myself.

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1. The United States has certain national holidays.
2. Many people in the USA do things on these holidays.
3. Consequently, they are not on-line and do not respond immediately.
4. Instead they respond when they return and read the discussion which went on while they were otherwise busy.

quote:

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Originally posted by Sad:
Yeah feedback sure. But if we're machines, why care? If one takes the stance that we're simply mechanism, then it seems to me the path'd lead to either extreme nihilism or extreme hedonism.

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For one thing, "life is meaningless" doesn't even begin to follow from "we're all machines". I found, if anything, that my life began to have meaning when I saw through the free-will illusion. Before that, it seemed like madness. Why do people do the terrible things they often do? (And living in .za, I saw a lot of that, on all sides.) Answer: Because that's what this kind of machine, programmed the way they had been programmed, behaves. Programmed another way, they would do something different. (And by "programming", I don't mean just social indoctrination or education. I'm including life's experiences as well, along with probably some genetically-inherited behavioral tendencies. A Golden Retriever is a much friendlier animal than a Rottweiler by nature, though a Golden Retriever can be trained as an attack dog if you try.)

Now, my nature is to try to understand the world, including myself as part of that world, and to wonder how it might be improved, defining improvement along the lines of, more understanding, less fighting, more respect for our differences, less hunger, less of people doing stupid, destructive things, and so on. Realizing that most people are utterly mechanical (though admittedly complex) was a big breakthrough.

Whether that's true of all people or not -- whether there's any escape from mechanism -- I haven't resolved yet. It depends, naturally, on how you define free will. Now, in philosophy there is an interesting notion called "emergent properties" which, analogous to Buckminster Fuller's theory of synergy, posits that somtimes a thing is more than the sum of its parts, that a compound may have properties that cannot be predicted from the properties of its components. One tantalizing thought that has been floating around in my mind lately, looking for a place to fit, is that the realization of our mechanical nature could itself be the basis for developing a higher order of mechanism, which, relative to the normal state of mankind, might be indistinguishable from free will (to paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke's famous "any sufficiently advanced technology" line).

So maybe that's a possible answer, that by seeing through the conventional illusion of free will, one can eventually get to the real thing. Whether or not it works out, it is at least my answer to your question of why it matters (to me).

Sorry you asked, aren't you?

I think the appropriate thing to do with the academics who push this junk onto ill-informed and gullible students is to give the entire school of thought an island or other area to run, from the power, water and sewer services up through manufacturing and everything else. Let them demonstrate how their wonderful ideology works in practice... and demand that they either prove it or repudiate it before being allowed back to the real world.

quote:

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Originally posted by Astrid Leuer:
First, it is perfectly possible to think and communicate the ideas marked out by "discrimination", "racial biology" "apartheid" and the older word "racialism" without hijacking the word "racism".

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quote:

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Secondly, the dictionary (.com) definitions quite clearly *do* make it much more difficult to discuss the more interesting concept of racism-as-oppression-and-related-to-the-white-male-power-structure.

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quote:

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I daresay I've read more Orwell than you have.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Tau Zero:
But of course I'd let the dupes and flunkies of the academics have a chance to play.�

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A gentleman mioght have withdrawn the accusation of "lying", with an apology.

[snip the fairly silly remarks, which do little more than demonstrate that Tau Zero doesn't understand social constructivism, or for that matter Leninism. For what it's worth, I'm a free market capitalist. But I don't intend to discuss matters like this with someone who thinks it's fun to call people liars without basis.]

quote:

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It is a small revisionist clique (with you as its local representative) trying to hijack the word "racism".

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did so, didn't too, did so, didn't to. I've put up my evidence; now you show me yours.

quote:

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More interesting, to whom?� And at the cost of making it nearly impossible to discuss the damaging phenomenon of black-on-white and black-on-hispanic racism (which example you ignored above)?� I think not.

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Ahhhhhhh .... we have someone here who thinks that the real problem in America is black-on-white and black-on-Hispanic racism. Yeh, it's all the fault of those black people, isn't it?

Despite, obviously, the fact that Tau Zero did exactly that (obviously, he was asserting rather than arguing, but that is only his own fault), he claims that it is impossible to discuss these subjects without defining power and oppression out of the question of racism. But, of course, as the newcomer and woman, it's *me* who is the "troll".

quote:

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And you have taken the lessons to heart, as a handbook.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Astrid Leuer:
By the way, everything Mindy has said about artificial intelligence is more or less total nonsense, but there's already an AI thread to explain why

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mindy Viridis:
It depends how precise we want to be about this notion of "gravity". Strictly speaking, any scientific "law" is only a "law" as long as it can be experimentally demonstrated. In the most literal sense, this would require an infinite number of experiments over an infinite amount of time for true 100% certainty; a single solid example of a failure to reproduce the phenomenon would be enough to cast doubt on the theory. What you're basically saying is that, to date, the theory that masses attract each other has been, so far as we can tell, quite reliable, and so you expect that if a man walks off the top of a tall building, he will fall to his death. I don't disagree that that is the likely result; anyone would expect it. Nevertheless, it isn't a scientific "fact", it's a prediction, however much experience backs it up.

Put another way, let's say tomorrow I walk off the top of a building and a I just float there in the air. (I know, but just accept it for the sake of argument.) It would be perfectly reasonable for you to wonder if I was somehow cheating by using magnetic repulsion, a jet-pack, or whatever, but if you could prove to your satisfaction that I was doing no such thing, would you modify your opinion of "gravity", or just stand there like a fool insisting that it was impossible? (Or just kill me to cover up the evidence, as is the traditional solution among religious fanatics.)

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Taking the last part first, I would be confronted with a new and unexpected part of reality, and would modify my notions to conform to it. Whether I would modify my notion of gravity remains to be seen -- I've witnessed a helicopter hover, and jets take off. They don't mean that gravity doesn't exist, only that a counterforce is possible, and that's what I would suspect in the hypothetical case under discussion (though of course I could be wrong, and it might be that my ideas concerning gravity would have to be changed).

But the fact is, you're not about to attempt a no-fakery 'float in the air.' You can spin hypotheticals like this, but no matter what answer you give to them, your behavior will not change. You will respect the law of gravity at all times, and if you slip up and forget, you go down, hard.

quote:

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Originally posted by Mindy Viridis:

I believe this translates into English as "Chinese Room! Chinese Room!" (Anyone not familiar with classic AI debates can look up John Searle, a philosophy professor at the University of California at Berkeley, for this little bit of nonsense.)

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nooooo ..... that's my response to Turing Machine Functionalist nonsense. Since (as far as I could make it out), you were espousing Dennettite Internal State Functionalist nonsense, my response is "zombies! zombies!"

here's the thread:
http://www.geekculture.com/ultimatebb/Forum16/HTML/000020.html

quote:

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Originally posted by Astrid Leuer:
A nasty little slight. I have never done this and resent the implication that I have.

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Actually, I thought it was quite well done.

quote:

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Originally posted by Astrid Leuer:

Face it boys; I actually disagree with you. I'm not crazy, or dishonest, or confused. It's simply the case that there are valid viewpoints other than your own. Why can't you accept that?

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Go back to my first post where I took umbrage. Go back from that point and see if you ever (re)defined racism and/or sexism.
Post the article date. I'll eat (some of)
my words if that's the case.

And deary, why the deliberate provocation by using the word 'boys'? Just a little giggle amongst the girls?

quote:

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Originally posted by Mindy Viridis:

I think you miss Astrid's point. ...

Let's start out with the assumption that discrimination doesn't really matter unless the people who discriminate have enough power that their discrimination really makes life harder for those who they discriminate against. In other words, discrimination only becomes "oppression" when it is systematic and backed by power, and oppression is what really matters. One could point to the Jews in Nazi Germany, blacks in Ian Smith's Rhodesia, under apartheid in .za, or in the USA before the civil rights movement, Native Americans in the USA until sometime in this century (I don't know all the history of this, sorry), and the Chinese in Japanese-occupied China during the second World War, as examples of oppressed people, by this definition.

And maybe part of the point is that the word "racism" should be a powerful thing, such that if one is guilty of "racism", one has truly harmed some racial group. The word seems devalued if it can be applied to any racial preference, even those that carry no real weight and don't really threaten anyone in a meaningful way.

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If you merely want to reserve the word 'racism' for that which has serious consequences, and call anti-white feeling among blacks something else, I wouldn't argue too hard.

But when you say that "discrimination only becomes "'oppression' when it is systematic and backed by power," I have real problems.

Find some copies of the New York Times for the summer of 1991, and read about the Crown Heights riots. Briefly, the chauffer for a prominent rabbi hit and killed (with his car) a young black man. Blacks in the neighborhood (and looters from out of the area) went on a rampage that lasted days, and included the murder of one Yankel Rosenbaum, a Jew that had nothing to do with the car accident. (see http://hometown.aol.com/ftr2k/ftr-021697.html for one account). I doubt if the dead Jew would be comforted by the idea that his murder wasn't really a racist act, because his killers weren't acting systematically and weren't backed by 'power.'

quote:

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Originally posted by Saintonge:
If that is 'classism,' then I'll proudly plead guilty... I see now what you mean by the 'parellel' to me and the Afrikaaners, but I also see the difference.

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quote:

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You appear to be using 'compulsive' in a sense that is new to me. A 'compulsive' who can control themself is different from one with free choice in what way?

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quote:

---

Hypotheticals: an industrial robot suddenly kills someone, and it turns out that this is due to a non-repairable fault in its makeup. Would you hesitate to have it destroyed? A dog is rabid, do you agonize over shooting it? Neither is morally culpable, both are dangerous to people around them? If you truly believe that violence and random acts of nature are morally equivalent, why should killing a murderer (or even a habitual litterer) bother you?

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quote:

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Perhaps you see now why I don't take this view of evil seriously.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Saintonge:
Find some copies of the New York Times for the summer of 1991, and read about the Crown Heights riots. Briefly, the chauffer for a prominent rabbi hit and killed (with his car) a young black man. Blacks in the neighborhood (and looters from out of the area) went on a rampage that lasted days, and included the murder of one Yankel Rosenbaum, a Jew that had nothing to do with the car accident. (see http://hometown.aol.com/ftr2k/ftr-021697.html for one account). I doubt if the dead Jew would be comforted by the idea that his murder wasn't really a racist act, because his killers weren't acting systematically and weren't backed by 'power.'

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But would the dead man really be comforted by the idea that his murder *was* a racist act? This is the kind of thinking that gets you stupid ideas like "hate crime" laws.

quote:

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Originally posted by Saintonge:
But when you say that "discrimination only becomes "'oppression' when it is systematic and backed by power," I have real problems.

Find some copies of the New York Times for the summer of 1991, and read about the Crown Heights riots.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Astrid Leuer:
Why am I responding to somebody who doesn't want to do anything except make nasty personal remarks? Do please, contrast this approach with that of Sad.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Tau Zero:
But of course I'd let the dupes and flunkies of the academics have a chance to play.

A gentleman mioght have withdrawn the accusation of "lying", with an apology.

---

You have pounced on every possible ambiguity to set up straw-man arguments.� Putting words in people's mouths is lying, pure and simple.� You have been called on this by several people, yet you persist.� This leaves you no excuses for your behavior. �If you don't like being called a liar, then STOP LYING!� (and if the shoe fits, wear it.)� If you have any question about what someone meant, it is fair to ask.� This group has given you numerous answers to questions both express and implied.� You have no reason not to accept people's stated positions as their true attitudes and beliefs (without your creative reading of "racism" into everything), and no cause to hurl slurs.� In case you forgot, this whole fracas began when you started spewing spurious accusations of racism.

quote:

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[snip the fairly silly remarks, which do little more than demonstrate that Tau Zero doesn't understand social constructivism, or for that matter Leninism. For what it's worth, I'm a free market capitalist. But I don't intend to discuss matters like this with someone who thinks it's fun to call people liars without basis.]

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quote:

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It is a small revisionist clique (with you as its local representative) trying to hijack the word "racism".

did so, didn't too, did so, didn't to. I've put up my evidence; now you show me yours.

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ra�cismn.

1. The belief that race accounts for differences in human character or ability and that a particular race is superior to others.
2. Discrimination or prejudice based on race.

From www.m-w.com (and note the date):

Main Entry: rac�ism
Pronunciation: 'rA-"si-z&m also -"shi-
Function: noun
Date: 1936
1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
2 : racial prejudice or discrimination
- rac�ist /-sist also -shist/ noun or adjective

The entire basis of your rants was false from the very beginning.� You owe everyone else here a HUGE apology, or at least a promise to drop the subject once and for all and try to treat people with a modicum of good faith.� I am beginning to believe that this is beyond you, but I'll take any good-faith effort and point out when you're slipping if you care to make the attempt.

quote:

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More interesting, to whom? And at the cost of making it nearly impossible to discuss the damaging phenomenon of black-on-white and black-on-hispanic racism (which example you ignored above)? I think not.

Ahhhhhhh .... we have someone here who thinks that the real problem in America is black-on-white and black-on-Hispanic racism. Yeh, it's all the fault of those black people, isn't it?

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quote:

---

Despite, obviously, the fact that Tau Zero did exactly that (obviously, he was asserting rather than arguing, but that is only his own fault), he claims that it is impossible to discuss these subjects without defining power and oppression out of the question of racism. But, of course, as the newcomer and woman, it's *me* who is the "troll".

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quote:

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And you have taken the lessons to heart, as a handbook.

If you'd read any of the works of the author you're quoting, or understood irony, we could have a big old laugh together about that.

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Sad:� Don't bother citing what Astrid wrote some time ago.� Posts can be silently editted here, anything that was once written can be altered to say what the author wants them to say today (and again tomorrow).� Very Nineteen Eighty-Fourish.

Snaggy:  There are a number of nasty bugs in the UBB editor.  On every edit, it prepends a blank to the source and appends a blank line.  It also fails to preserve < and other HTML escapes.

quote:

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Originally posted by Sad:
Well.

I think it *is* legit to try and recast terms such as racism, if one believes that the canonical definition predisposes one to
categorize the world in an unreasonable way.

However, it's just ridiculous to do it without doing so explicitly, mid-stream and without context.

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quote:

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The free-will/machine argument between Saitonge (sp?) and Mindy. Come on, if you're not willing to posit that we each of
the ability to choose our own path, then ALL of this is moot -- just a bunch of blather,
mental masturbation.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mindy Viridis:
Yes, interesting. Of course, the whole notion that blacks in America can't be racist, but blacks in Rwanda can, implies that the analysis of where the "power" lies is dependent on the situation. Which would seem to make that analysis rather complex, since one would then have to figure out whether, with respect to the man they were beating to death, the Crown Heights blacks were in a position of power, although they were most certainly not so in regard to the city of the New York as a whole. At this point, my head starts spinning and I start wondering if the whole discussion isn't just blathering, on both sides.

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quote:

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Originally posted by Tau Zero:
[snip].

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Whatever, darling.

quote:

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Originally posted by Mindy Viridis:
I believe this translates into English as "Chinese Room! Chinese Room!" (Anyone not familiar with classic AI debates can look up John Searle, a philosophy professor at the University of California at Berkeley, for this little bit of nonsense.)

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Saintonge:
You appear to be using 'compulsive' in a sense that is new to me. A 'compulsive' who can control themself is different from one with free choice in what way?

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quote:

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Originally posted by Mindy Viridis:Well, are you suggesting that alcoholism isn't an addiction? I thought the parallel was rather obvious. An alcoholic can't help drinking, but he can delay it temporarily if circumstances warrant.

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I suggest you ask around and attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. People will get up and say "My name is Joe/Sarah/
whatever, and I'm an alcoholic." Many of them haven't had a drink in twenty years or more.

Of course, you could define compulsive circularly, to mean they aren't 'really' alcoholics because they can control themselves. But that just begs the question of whether there are any really compulsive people in the world.

I also point out that serial killers who have gone to prison, and been under observation more or less continuously, never seem to break down and compulsively murder fellow inmates, though some, like Dahmer, were homosexual (if you call fucking a corpse sex, anyway).

quote:

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Saintonge:Hypotheticals: an industrial robot suddenly kills someone, and it turns out that this is due to a non-repairable fault in its makeup. Would you hesitate to have it destroyed? A dog is rabid, do you agonize over shooting it? Neither is morally culpable, both are dangerous to people around them? If you truly believe that violence and random acts of nature are morally equivalent, why should killing a murderer (or even a habitual litterer) bother you?

---

quote:

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Mindy:I don't mind destroying a mass-produced robot, as they're easily replaced. I accept the shooting of a rabid dog for the same reason that I accept the shooting of a man with a gun who can reasonably be believed to be an immediate threat to those around him; his death prevents others. More generally, though, humans are much more individual and complex than mass-produced machines. The life story of Malcolm X provides a sufficient example of why someone who seems to be headed down a socially unacceptable path should not simply be shot peremptorily. You never know what they may have accomplished later, and it isn't enough to say, "Well, the way he was going, whatever he would have accomplished, we probably wouldn't have liked it."

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Mass produced or not, human being are still, in your opinion, machines (though I must say, you waver back and forth on that, as your 12:34 PM response to Sad demonstrates). You obviously care about people, and regard them as more important than you might, say, regard a hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind super-complex gadget. I just don't see any way for these positions to be logically reconciled.

quote:

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Saintonge:Perhaps you see now why I don't take this view of evil seriously.

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quote:

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Mindy: Not really, but I'm getting a better sense of your thinking. What do you think of Ayn Rand?

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To spell it out: you don't seem to be able to hold your own view of humans-as-mechanisms consistently. Just as behaviorism couldn't get along without ostentatiously throwing concepts such as 'mind' out the front door, then sneaking them in through the back door, you and others who claim to regard humans as machines always end up treating them as other than machines. If even those who espouse a view can't maintain it for any length of time, I don't see any reason I should bother with it.

Rand: A good writer in many ways, a stimulating thinker, someone who influenced me greatly thirty years ago and from whom I learned much, but with whom I have many disagreements.

quote:

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Originally posted by Astrid Leuer:
But would the dead man really be comforted by the idea that his murder *was* a racist act? This is the kind of thinking that gets you stupid ideas like "hate crime" laws.

---

Btw, I would like to express my sincere admiration for the way you dodged the main question of my post: is a black killing a white acting in a racist manner?

quote:

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I also point out that serial killers who have gone to prison, and been under observation more or less continuously, never seem to break down and compulsively murder fellow inmates

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I'd guess it's pretty hard to murder anyone if you're under continuous observation

Sorry if you think I dodged your point; I thought that your point was the one I answered. I guess that my answer would be (and it won't, I'm sure surprise you to know that the problem of black-against-white violence has been the subject of a certain amount of killing in South Africa) that this was a racially motivated killing (if that is what it was; I've no knowledge of the nature of the mob beyond what you've told me), but that it wasn't "racism" in the sense I've been using.

I think we need to make a distinction between racist *events*, or if you like "events of racism" and /racism/, the abstract concept. It doesn't make sense to talk of oppression in the context of an event, because oppression is a process. So (although I'd still prefer sticking to the old word "racialist", common usage has tainted it), it is intelligible to call an event "racist" if it is an event of discrimination.

But discrimination is an activity carried out in events; oppression is an activity which is carried out as a continuous process. So there's a fallacy of composition here; unless you're prepared to define "racism" as merely the sum of racist actions (which seems to me to be completely wrong from a psychological and sociological perspective), then you have to define it in terms of oppression.

I'm not sure that this is totally clear, but I'm summarising a fairly complicated literature here. Please ask about anything that isn't clear -- if you can avoid making hysterical accusations that I'm a liar or a loony, you'll get a sweet answer

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Originally posted by Astrid Leuer:
I'd guess it's pretty hard to murder anyone if you're under continuous observation

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Apparently less so than you think. Both the statistics I've seen and anecdotal evidence from participants (a good friend, now deceased, was once a bank robber) paint prison as quite violent.

In any case, Mindy's point was that the true compulsive might resist their impulses for a while, but would eventually snap regardless of being watched. As far as I know, this never happens.

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Astrid:
I guess that my answer would be (and it won't, I'm sure surprise you to know that the problem of black-against-white violence has been the subject of a certain amount of killing in South Africa)

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Your usage confuses me. In what sense can 'a problem' be the 'subject' of killing? Did you mean something like 'black-against-white violence has been occuring to a certain extent'?

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Astrid: that this was a racially motivated killing (if that is what it was; I've no knowledge of the nature of the mob beyond what you've told me), but that it wasn't "racism" in the sense I've been using.

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So, will 'racial violence do as a term for this?

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Astrid:
I think we need to make a distinction between racist *events*, or if you like "events of racism" and /racism/, the abstract concept. It doesn't make sense to talk of oppression in the context of an event, because oppression is a process. So (although I'd still prefer sticking to the old word "racialist", common usage has tainted it), it is intelligible to call an event "racist" if it is an event of discrimination.

But discrimination is an activity carried out in events; oppression is an activity which is carried out as a continuous process. So there's a fallacy of composition here; unless you're prepared to define "racism" as merely the sum of racist actions (which seems to me to be completely wrong from a psychological and sociological perspective), then you have to define it in terms of oppression.

I'm not sure that this is totally clear, but I'm summarising a fairly complicated literature here. Please ask about anything that isn't clear -- if you can avoid making hysterical accusations that I'm a liar or a loony, you'll get a sweet answer

you might also want to check out http://www.racetraitor.com which is very good on this sort of issue.

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It's relatively clear. After I have time to reflect on it a bit, and maybe check out that site, I'll respond.

Btw, I don't care if the answer is sweet, just so it's clear as possible. I also don't care if we call 'hateful acts motivated by the race of the victim' "racialist acts," as long as we have an agreed upon term for them.

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Saintonge

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Your usage confuses me. In what sense can 'a problem' be the 'subject' of killing? Did you mean something like 'black-against-white violence has been occuring to a certain extent'?

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No, sorry, I meant "black-on-white" violence has been the subject of a certain amount of *thought*, but mistyped. Despite what *cough* some people say, I don't edit posts other than to correct typesetting flaws.

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Btw, I don't care if the answer is sweet, just so it's clear as possible. I also don't care if we call 'hateful acts motivated by the race of the victim' "racialist acts," as long as we have an agreed upon term for them.

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Originally posted by Astrid Leuer:
Unlike *cough* some people, I'm not hung up on forcing everyone to use words in a way which is politically convenient to myself.

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Originally posted by Tau Zero:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Astrid Leuer:
[b]Unlike *cough* some people, I'm not hung up on forcing everyone to use words in a way which is politically convenient to myself.

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Unlike *cough* some people, I'm not hung up on forcing other people to use words in a way which is politically convenient to myself, or otherwise to "account for" themselves.

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I would hate to believe that you believe what you're saying.� The amount of cognitive dissonance must be horrendous.

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Astrid, Tau, Mecka, could you-all just stop it?

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Originally posted by Saintonge:
Well, we've now gone a record for length, and certainly for nastiness as well.

Astrid, Tau, Mecka, could you-all just stop it?

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Agreed. Unconditionally.

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Originally posted by Saintonge:
I'd be interested in hearing why you think Searle's argument is nonsense.

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First, anyone interested in this who does not know what the Chinese Room is should read this very good summary at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

I don't think much of the Chinese Room argument. It is based on a lot of word-games involving concepts that are not really well understood by anyone, Searle included, and may not be valid, such as "intentionality" (which is further confused by distinguishing between "intrinsic" and "derived" intentionalities), "mental states", and his distinction between "syntax" (symbol manipulation) and "semantics" (meaning). What does it mean to "understand" something? There isn't really a solid, universally-accepted answer to that question. I would say that if you have a symbol, and you know how it relates to other symbols (representing its properties and relationships), then it fits into place in your mental cosmos and you understand it. (I'm not sure what else it could mean; within the brain, on the physical level, there's nothing but electro-chemical signals and states.) Manipulating symbols and keeping track of relationships are things that computers do very well.

Searle accepts that the mind is a result of the natural workings of the brain; and as far as we can tell, the brain is a purely physical, deterministic device, essentially a kind of highly complex, massively parallelized analog computer. It should be possible to simulate the workings of the brain on Von Neumann machines, so why can't such a simulation result in computer-based intelligence?

Searle's argument is essentially circular; it isn't really an argument at all, merely an illustration of his preconception that there is a meaningful difference between valid symbol-manipulation and understanding. A revision of the Chinese Room known as the Chinese Gymnasium further illustrates his preconception that only brains (and only individual brains at that) can have understanding. In both cases, no real argument is presented; only an illustration of a conclusion that was assumed from the beginning.

I don't know whether intelligent computers will ever exist, or if not, whether this will be due to some essential principle or simply our failure to solve the problem. But I don't think Searle has answered the question.

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Originally posted by Saintonge:
I suggest you ask around and attend an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. People will get up and say "My name is Joe/Sarah/
whatever, and I'm an alcoholic." Many of them haven't had a drink in twenty years or more.

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I also point out that serial killers who have gone to prison, and been under observation more or less continuously, never seem to break down and compulsively murder fellow inmates, though some, like Dahmer, were homosexual (if you call fucking a corpse sex, anyway).

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Mass produced or not, human being are still, in your opinion, machines (though I must say, you waver back and forth on that, as your 12:34 PM response to Sad demonstrates). ...

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You obviously care about people, and regard them as more important than you might, say, regard a hand-crafted, one-of-a-kind super-complex gadget. I just don't see any way for these positions to be logically reconciled.

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To spell it out: you don't seem to be able to hold your own view of humans-as-mechanisms consistently.

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Rand: A good writer in many ways, a stimulating thinker, someone who influenced me greatly thirty years ago and from whom I learned much, but with whom I have many disagreements.

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Originally posted by Astrid Leuer:
Agreed. Unconditionally.

So, as we were saying .....

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Tommorrow or the next day.

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Saintonge

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Originally posted by Astrid Leuer:
Since (as far as I could make it out), you were espousing Dennettite Internal State Functionalist nonsense, my response is "zombies! zombies!"

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Oh, zombies are real! I'm one now.

If I get home without an accident, I may be human again tomorrow (all together now: "Again? " Thank you.)

Have a nice day/evening, and if I don't post here till next week, nice weekend.

*Walks blearily away*

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Saintonge

Astrid: Not satisfied. However, metal fatigue. Finis.

Astrid: I can't get that site either, although it may just be temporarily down. Sad's anonymizer suggestion didn't work (thanks, Sad). See if I can find some other path there.

Hmm, google says they've never heard of it. But they have heard of a web page that mentions it: http://www.bcca.org/rel/race_unity/Books/, which mentions a book, (Ignatiev, Noel & John Garvey, editors, Race Traitor, 1996, Routledge, New York/London.) Just what I need, another book to read ...

Well, we'll see what it says when I have time.

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Originally posted by Saintonge:
I'd be interested in hearing why you think Searle's argument is nonsense.

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Originally posted by Mindy Viridis:
First, anyone interested in this who does not know what the Chinese Room is should read this very good summary at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

I don't think much of the Chinese Room argument. It is based on a lot of word-games involving concepts that are not really well understood by anyone, Searle included, ...

I don't know whether intelligent computers will ever exist, or if not, whether this will be due to some essential principle or simply our failure to solve the problem. But I don't think Searle has answered the question.

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Thanks. I decided to answer this over on the AI thread .

In re to our early discussion of people as mechanisms: I'm not sure that the position "Most of us are pre-programmed mechanisms, but some of us somehow, mystically, transcend that" (I hope this is an accurate paraphrase of your position) is coherent, but I don't argue against it because I'm not sure that it isn't. But I wonder why you think most people are mechanisms, and if you have any idea how or why some people (in your view) managed to transcend mechanism?

What I am sure of is: a)much as I enjoy posting stuff like this, I really wish I could sleep through the night; b) the reason it took me so long to get your point is that your combination of views is not one that I am accustomed to; c)I don't agree with you -- I think we all are at least somewhat beyond the mechnism stage. But I see no way to advance the argument at the moment, so ... ?

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The white race is a historically constructed social formation. It consists of all those who partake of the privileges of the white skin in this society. Its most wretched members share a status higher, in certain respects, than that of the most exalted persons excluded from it, in return for which they give their support to a system that degrades them.

The key to solving the social problems of our age is to abolish the white race, which means no more and no less than abolishing the privileges of the white skin. Until that task is accomplished, even partial reform will prove elusive, because white influence permeates every issue, domestic and foreign, in U.S. society.

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As long as certain groups decide to define themselves by their differences from "the other" and those differences include any factor important to success, they'll be less successful.  If the destruction of the "socially-constructed" notion of merit coinciding with skin color (a racist idea) comes about, that's great.  However, I get the feeling that the authors also mean to undermine the concept of merit in general.  Needless to say, I do not agree with this.  Even if people pay lip service to this idea, they undermine it in practice.

(Not sure if I phrased that extremely well, because the language style of modern philosophy is obscurantist and this itty bitty text-entry window makes it tough to view things as a whole.  The lack of a preview helps not at all.)

I really get this feeling from some parts of this page.

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The white race is a club, which enrolls certain people at birth, without their consent, and brings them up according to its rules.

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More from that page:

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By the arrogance of their demands, the Southern leaders compelled the people of the north to resist.

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