I don't think there can be universal common ground, because there is no common ground to be found between billions of people. Stalin though is still often polled as the greatest leader ever in Russia because he's credited with defeating Nazi Germany, despite at the same time being the person who killed most citizens in history of the Soviet Union.
Has political correctness actually gone mad?
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I don't think there can be universal common ground, because there is no common ground to be found between billions of people. Stalin though is still often polled as the greatest leader ever in Russia because he's credited with defeating Nazi Germany, despite at the same time being the person who killed most citizens in history of the Soviet Union.
They were psychopaths. Everyone should hate what they stood for. Whether you hate them as individuals is irrelevant. They were completely twisted.
The answer to that is usually 'views to the right of me'. They can't see the irony though, they just don't want to feel bad because of the views they hold.
Opinions are tolerated all the time, it's why there's a bunch of very right wing folk on what is a left leaning forum who haven't been banned and aren't abused. Now I'm sure some of them hold offensive views which would see them banned but that isn't a lack of tolerance it's just complying with boundaries.
Have you diagnosed them in order to come to that conclusion? And why wouldn't you tolerate their views if tolerance is absolute?
What about those who hold similar views but aren’t them? Am I allowed to be intolerant towards them? Or is it just those three?
That's not the point of the video though. You are narrowing it down to specific instances where you didn't like something that happened. In the video, the point is explicitly that all the left goes ad-hominem in all cases when someone goes against their viewpoints. From your posts since, you don't seem to agree with that specific stance. My impression is that you don't like the ad-hominem, that you think it happens on both sides (right and left), but that the left does it worse, or at least it bothers you more. That's more nuanced, and fits with this post:
'Actually giving the video some credibility' suggests that you didn't think it was all that credible until people started responding in a certain way (which I think you greatly overstate, but anyway). Yet you started the whole thing by saying this:
So my conclusion is that you didn't think it was actually well said, but posted this to bait people into certain reactions, just so you could go 'gotcha'. What a waste of everybody's time.
Tolerance is not absolute. To kill everyone who disagrees with you takes intolerence to the nth degree, yes?
You didn't answer my question and today you posted and agreed with a video that was making the point that tolerance is absolute.
I feel like we've come full circle here, but I fear you won't recognize it.
I thought the video was quite good, and I agree with it mostly. Never expected this response to be honest.
The only thing I wanted to clarify is that I don't necessarily think that the intolerance is entirely a one way street, although I do think the left is much more intolerant as a whole.
I don't think it was a waste of everyone's time because some of those responding, immediately came out and attacked the source, which I thought was quite funny considering the rhetoric. Others seemed to labour the point about how certain views should be ridiculed, which is true. In the end of the day, I got the impression that people were wondering whether to say that it is ok to be intolerant of people they don't agree with, after all we see it expressed in other threads all the time. I was opening the door for people to come out and say it, but they were holding back. Interesting.
I don't know anything about Prager University, first I heard of them today.
I offered you the opportunity to say that it was ok not to tolerate people with views you disagree with. If this is true, the video is bollocks.
That's just your view. Can you not be tolerant of their supporters views? To dissmiss them as psychopaths is very judgemental and it becomes more of an attack on the person rather than their views, and that jist reeks of woke-ism.
There is always a great difference between tolerating peope's views and respecting them.
Well, I think the video is almost a parody in the way it frames current-day intolerance as an exclusively leftist thing, and claims that it's what all the left does all the time. That is not exaggeration for rhetorical effect, it's the core point - and it's obviously nonsense. To list the key problems:
- Yes, there are leftists people, especially on social media, who want to 'cancel' everyone they disagree with; but this is not the prevailing attitude.
- This 'cancelling' nonsense is not at all restricted to the left.
- Intolerance is also not an exclusively leftist thing. If anything, the irony is that leftist intolerance is mostly about intolerant views. E.g., directed at people that do not except homosexuality as a normal thing. That sort of intolerance, which is not of opinion but of basic biology and lifestyle, is actually strongly right-wing.
As for the ad-hominem thing: if a source has a sizeable body of work and is showing time and again that it is spouting nonsense, then it makes sense to bring that up. You may not have known Prager University, and you may not have known that context; but others do. Yes, everything could in principle be considered at face-value; but there is a point where you stop taking people seriously simply because they have spent long enough making clear why they shouldn't be.
This sounds a lot like saying "calling some a racist is just as bad as racism". The right tends to be intolerant of everything that goes against their traditional culture. The left is intolerant of intolerance. To claim the left is more intolerant really sounds absurd in today's society.
BTW did you watch that video on Tucker Carlson from Last Week Tonight. It's a powerful retort to all the views propagated by the vid you link and praised.
Also, its not okay to be intolerant of people you disagree with, its okay to be intolerant of people that espouse, racist, homophobic and those types of directly harmful, intolerant views. I'm sure you can come to understand that is a massive difference.
I guess you could say some positve things about them. Hitler temporarily stimulated the german economy and made germans incredibly patriotic. Stalin massively increased tourism in the Sibera region. Bin Laden was a brave fighter in the mujahideen against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistna.
And it's not okay to tolerate racist, homophobic and all similar types of harmful views because you are enabling them. Actually that's essentially the criticism that we could make of the likes of Fox News and Tucker even if one considered that they are not "bad" themselves, they are actively enabling racists, xenophobes, homophobes and conspiracy theorists which isn't tolerable.
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That's right! Feck the emotional snowflakes...
Exactly. It's really such a dishonest tactic from Tucker and Prager and those people. "You have to accept our dehumanizing behavior otherwise you are intolerant and just as bad as we are". Its a nonsensical argument from disingenuous people.
If you have an opinion you will always find a way to back up your opinion. That's the problem with the world today. People form opinions and then look for evidence to support their opinion, instead of looking at the evidence and then forming an opinion.
Confirmation bias has always been a problem.
I biased against sexism, racism, bigotry and homophobia. But that's my confirmation bias showing.
I always knew something was wrong with you. Now that you faced your demons, you can turn your life around and tolerate sexism, racism, bigotry and homophobia but not leftism that's one step too far.
Reported for showing such intolerance.
It’s why the algorithms driving social media are so pernicious as well. They don’t seek to do anything but reinforce whatever any inkling of interest you may have expressed in the pursuit of ad money.
If you take YouTube as an example the recommended section can send you down a rabbit hole with each suggested video providing the same narrow interpretation of whatever is being discussed as the next.
The algorithm has no purpose beyond keeping you watching so it won’t offer a counterpoint or an alternate viewpoint because that might be jarring to be exposed to and make you log out. So you go deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole because it’s comforting to hear the same thing over and over.
I’ve a few friends who were moderate, maybe slightly right-leaning, shift so significantly to the right because of this type of echo chamber-driven repetition.
I think that's happened to my best friend.
When you question his sources he says they're independent. It's shocking because he's highly intelligent for the most part but I hear the same tropes I come across in the CE. I have fun negating them and then he usually changes the subject
Not to mention that the vast majority of people (like 90%+) don’t even understand what a proper review of all available evidence looks like (and wouldn’t be arsed to put the necessary effort in if they did)
Isn't it crazy that the more advanced we have got as a society, the less intelligent the average joe has become.
It is, but I think those in power have designed it that way. Keep them stupid, keep them disengaged.
The smarter the phone the dumber the owner.
I think that's happened to my best friend.
When you question his sources he says they're independent. It's shocking because he's highly intelligent for the most part but I hear the same tropes I come across in the CE. I have fun negating them and then he usually changes the subject
It’s a tough situation. You don’t want to cause too much of an argument but there’s certain viewpoints that need to be shut down immediately. An awkward balancing act.
I think it’s probably a consequence of these kind of discussions happening without 4 or 5 pints to soften the blow.
I don't always consider intelligence measured by IQ to be the best metric, but I found this article pretty interesting.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbes...e-while-iq-is-on-the-decline/?sh=65724469b103
Is this really true though? Think of how ridiculously stupid and shut off to anything happening outside their village most French or Egyptian or Chinese farmers would have been 200 years ago.
Im not sure the 'average' human has ever actually been particularly smart. It wasn't that long ago that we were killing people for witchcraft in Europe. Or less than a hundred years since the apparently enlightened Europeans dragged the entire world into war twice over.
Maybe a better way to put it is the mean between the lowest and the highest feels like its lower then ever.
Interesting, I'm as guilty as anyone about the multitasking, i'm so used to tech these days i will be looking at my phone, watching a stream and browsing a website at the same time.
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It's crazy because it's completely false.
Dunno about IQ but I’m willing to bet the mean attention span has been absolutely decimated over the last decade.
Says he, flicking between the caf, CL football and a whatsapp group chat about the world record for hanging off a bar (two hours 22 minutes, with shaking out allowed, 20 minutes without)
Says he, flicking between the caf, CL football and a whatsapp group chat about the world record for hanging off a bar (two hours 22 minutes, with shaking out allowed, 20 minutes without)
I can understand why it would feel like that, I certainly feel the same sometimes too.
I think its just more that everyone seems to have a platform now and everyone seems to think they should have a platform. Even 20-30 years ago, I wouldn't have heard Joe bloggs' opinion on public health policy because I'd read or see a public health expert talking about it only. Apply that to economic policy, science, the arts etc etc.
Now....well. We have the whole gamut of viewpoints!
I certainly agree attention spans have dropped off a cliff though. Mine certainly has. I used to love reading books for pleasure, still do. But I now have to make an active effort to get away from phone, laptop etc.
That's why I love books even when it comes to science, I often struggle to remain focused on screens but with a book my mindset is different. I wonder if it's common.
Interesting theory. I only read books in bed at night via a screen (backlit kindle) and rattle through a couple of chapters a time, no problem. Can’t remember the last time I made it to the end of a long read in the newspapers, without skimming, during daylight hours.