The new forums will be named Coin Return (based on the most recent vote)! You can check on the status and timeline of the transition to the new forums here.
The Guiding Principles and New Rules document is now in effect.
The Price of Freedom (Rainbows?!)
Noblesnake
Registered User new member
Registered User new member
My girlfriend was on youtube earlier and amidst her grazing she came across a particularly thorny offering. The video is un-ironically titled "Sprinkler Rainbow Conspiracy". After filling the apartment with incoherent grumbling and gnashing of teeth, she sent me a link. What I received can only be described as an act of war against reasoned thought. Normally, I feel a fair amount of pity for people who don't bear the burden of intelligence, but for some reason, this video upset me deeply. I'm a huge proponent of free speech and I understand that in order to enjoy that right, we need to endure the speech of those we disagree with, but this seems excessive. The magic bullet theory is one thing, but this woman is ostensibly trying to incite unrest in the populace over an effing rainbow in her sprinklers. I don't have any yet, but I hope to have kids one day. Try though I might to armor them against stuff like this, they may get it from a trusted source and, unable to defend themselves, perpetuate these sorts of things. Am I reading too much into this? I may just be taking it to it's illogical conclusion, but I think this portends something darker on the horizon. What are your thoughts?
Noblesnake on
0
Posts
3DS: 1607-3034-6970
That would be a great start, because it would be kind of silly to strike down the 1st amendment because of vague speculation about "something darker on the horizon".
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Very informative.
Also, and I don't like playing Devil's Advocate, but who the fuck are you to look down on her with pity. Some people believe that moving their NES controller makes them jump higher, some people pick up four-leaf clovers, or avoid cracks in the pavement lest their mothers end up in traction. I know it's so hard to put up with the simpletons and mouth-breathers of the world, much less share the same self-generating media space as them, but the world isn't made of neck-beards and pocket-protector-highwater eggheads. See this?
You know why this is so scary? Because in part, it's true. While you and your girlfriend are talking Nische and Kant, the woman from your video is having her eigth kid, and each one will grow up more ignorant than the last. So in the end, because of you precious Darwin, she's the one who will win out, and her progeny will make sprinklers a relic of the past.
I didn't realize the argument would turn to semantics so quickly. Perhaps I should have said forbearance, sympathy, empathy, compassion? Take your pick. I'm neither a nihilist nor elitist. I believe that all folk have merit and I have no desire to debate philosophy. However, I do believe that I have the right to feel sorry for whom I like, I also believe I have every right to speak out against opinions and user-generated media that I find offensive or misguided. To attack me personally because of the argument I present is juvenile. Furthermore, I do not, nor will I ever, have any combination of neck-beard, pocket protector, or highwaters.
What do Kant, Nietzsche, and Darwin have to do with my distaste for a video where a woman suggests the government is putting "metallic ionized-salt" in our air and water supplies. While Idiocracy portrayed the exact world I would endeavor to avoid, it has very little bearing on the point I'm trying to make. I never imagined that my desire not to pollute the planet with children, nor my desire for the children I eventually father to have a world that values intelligence and cleverness would be considered a character flaw. It appears that my effort to provoke civilized discourse has earned me only ire.
In fact, the only person who has implied such a thing in this thread is you, at the very start of it.
edit: Or is pity automatically one of those "no no" emotions you should never have, because regardless of how bad some people's situation is, god damn how dare you feel sorry for them?
Are you seriously considering limiting the first amendment because a crazy person put a video up on the internet?
I assume that your utterly erroneous characterisation of human evolution is intended as ironic satire?
I blame the ponies.
Seriously though, I can't imagine Crazy Sprinkler Lady convincing anyone remotely intelligent of her "rainbow conspiracy." Actually, not even intelligent . . . Even someone not very mentally gifted can note that rainbows always appear in waterfalls and sprinklers (and always have), if they have a minimal power of observation.
Now, it'll be HILARIOUS if Malkor is being serious and treating Lemarckian evolution as a thing that actually happens.
This is an education issue that relates to people being too lazy to do their own research in a subject and not being taught what a valid argument looks like. The solution is to teach a generic process of skepticism, not eviscerate the First Amendment. The California video game law is being handled exactly as these things should be. Every judge I can find reference to in a quick google search has struck it down. Bad laws happen, there is a system in place for fixing/removing them (now, it could be argued that the system is flawed, but the solution is to fix the system, not neuter the First Amendment) and it is being employed. The only reason that this is getting to the Supreme Court is because the state of California keeps pushing the issue and that the Supreme Court wants to settle the issue one way or the other so that people will stop asking about it. I'd be surprised to find out they don't end up strongly against it (well, not surprised with the current set, just more depressed. But that's another thread). Unless I'm understanding you wrong, you're arguing that certain classes of speech that do not clearly result in harm to another person should not be allowed to happen. Assuming I'm reading that right, its in clear and direct opposition to the First Amendment (which would imply that your statement is really "I also love the first amendment, except when it protects speech that I really don't like."). Apologies if I misread something there.
edit: having just watched that video I'd need to see a fairly strong argument before I would be willing to bet on that not being satire. I just don't buy that someone has not noticed rainbows all over the place as they grew up.
Rigorous Scholarship
I am doing this with what appears to be great success. But I will show this video to my daughter and ask her to explain why it's wrong! The best way to vaccinate against bad ideas is to expose yourself to them in small doses.
:^::^::^::^:
Youtube should have a 30yr age limit.
I'm just wondering why you're deliberately exposing more people to the video thereby increasing the chances of the bad information getting perpetuated? I get what you're saying though, one of my pet peeves is people continuing to perpetuate misinformation, for examples: the myth of QWERTY being designed to slow typists down, or that DVORAK is a better layout.
Unfortunately, what with facebook and twitter and social network integration, youtube memes and/or misinformation is spreading increasingly faster and is increasingly resistant to extermination. This isn't the end of the world, but we can see it from here.
Yep.
Don't trust anyone over 30.
As stated before, introduce your kids to critical thinking. Teach them not to trust everything they hear, see or read. Actually, teaching them to read would be a good idea. I don't know what age is a good time to start telling them to cite their source, but certainly at some point you could/should.
Look, you can't protect your kids by hiding shit from them all the time, because when something gets through they won't have any defenses built up. It's like your body's immune system; you need to get inoculated against shitty ideas through exposure.
Yeah, you know your life has gotten pretty bad when you go psycho on a tree at 2am. I blame my college degree for keeping me from hitting that point.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV-ehD6Wm2Q
?
(Well, I guess technically it's not 2 AM.)
The guy that chopped it down was sitting with the group at the start.
they were cleary just doing it for a stupid joke because they were bored and don't give a shit about anyone else. They were all laughing, lolling around and one guy tried to interrupt it a few times. Guess he thought better of it.
The guy that "stole" the bike picked it up, rode it for a lol about a meter, put it back, laughed then wandered off.
It was the same guy that kept trying to stop his friend from chopping down the tree.
I'm seeing really stupid hijinks of the sort young men normally get up to. Nothing psychotic.
Seeing too much into this. Young males doing dumb stuff because they are bored.
I can't watch the ops vid the link is broken?