I apologize to everyone.

East Asians aren't necessarily smarter, they just have far harder work ethics.

But it is funny that in the USA they are pretty much wholesale excluded from talks of race, quotas, affirmative action, etc because the left does not consider them a true minority even though, by definition, they are, and they most certainly suffer from discrimination. It is also funny that racism against non muslim Asians is often ignored and brushed under the rug, especially when the racism is levied by a black or Hispanic person.

Some people have already hinted at this but I'll put it more bluntly: race is not a valid biological concept. There are more differences among groups of people than there are between them, and there is no easy way classify people into different races because there is no feature that's exclusive to one group. Take for example black skin and curly hair. Africans as well as Melanesians and Australian Aborigines share these traits, but there are also traits they don't share, so you can't lump them into one racial category. Africans don't have prominent brow ridges, but Aborigines do. In Africa there are differences in skin color, hair texture, stature, build, facial features, etc. between various groups.

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Of course, the so-called "Arabs" will often be included in that classification.

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Classified as Caucasian in the United States, interestingly.

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Originally Posted by Montmorency

Asians...

Of course, the so-called "Arabs" will often be included in that classification.

Is it really surprising that East Asians - and East Asian immigrants - perform well academically? As surprising as the fact that they are quite accomplished cheaters?

Note that Southeast Asian immigrants chronically underperform.

And note that even Han Chinese is not so genetically or even culturally homogeneous to be counted as a race.

What is the sense, Kadagar, in trying to organize a universe that is built up out of certain fundamental particles into molecules or cells?

While it's certainly nice to think of the world as a simple place, it is most certainly not simple. Not nearly simple enough to dismiss a broad abstraction on the basis of other abstractions no-less-broad.

That there are differences between groups is obvious - an extension of the fact that there are differences between individuals. This broad principle, however, does not at all license you to declare, 'All the darkies are just stupid.

There is more basis to legitimate groupings than sheer aesthetic distaste. Come back when every single human's genome has been sequenced and catalogued as only then may we begin to discuss these matters.

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Because I have declared that all darkies are stupid?

It's a hard topic to debate, as people put way to much emotion into it, often to the degree where they shut of their analytic part of the mind. Heck, even in some cases doing extremely stupid things like completely making up statements from the opposition.



Will get back when I have more time, just wanted to put some sort of a dampener on the more... special ways to interpret me.

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

Hispanic/Latino was also classified as White for most of our Beaurocratic history. :yes:

Racial Divides are invented because humans have an innate desire to turn everything into an Us vs. Them scenario. Its science. Its fact. People will always find a way to be prejudiced if given the opportunity, and especially if given any kind of fuel for their confirmation bias. It is telling of our times that people spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to be more racist when by all rights its something that should have gone away with the Enlightenment in western culture. Object Lesson? You can't kill ignorance with words. People turn to Us vs. Them scenarios when they feel under pressure. A liberal democracy should spend almost all of its resources trying to relieve that pressure and create an environment of liberty and prosperity, so people have no good reason for that mentality. And even then, it will never go away, because it is a habit that probably evolved over time to help us survive. Quite a pickle.

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Kind of hard to do when brutal double standards that existed for generations are replaced with more subtle double standards that turn the tables. People in this country cannot have legitimate discussions about race. "Racist" is the new N-Word

Us vs them. We as a society go out of our way to maximize that emphasis.

It's called sports. We give young people heaps of cash to play games in which we glorify them as heroes and set about to chest thump how our team is better then your team.

Yeah us, our team of spoilt brats from around the country beat your spoilt brats from around the country therefore I'm a better person.

and in the end, it's only 'round and 'round:

http://youtu.be/0pbso85eeNo

careful GC you're beginning to sound like Mark Twain :p

Classism, yes, but greed probably more so. Or maybe they are a bit of the same. Funny you mention a race screwing its own race. I can think of a few Indian Tribes in Oklahoma like that, and a couple in New England who are asking for bailouts because the leaders pissed away all their profits instead of using them to build their communities.

Race is just a discussion diversion to deflect attention from who is really screwing who, and it is not always just about class. A lot of people are in the dumps because they put themselves there or didn't crawl out when given the opportunity. Classism goes both ways, as evident from the profession victim mentality.

In the end, the leaders and puppeteers want us to tune out to what they are doing, except come time to vote, then back under the rug the issues are swept. I recall Lemur predicting the voter ID issue going away after the election, and it largely has, which is sad because a legitimate compromise would be easy to reach, but hey that doesn't get votes like good old fashioned sabre rattling

You want to see race on race, go to a political nomination rally. The mud really begins to fly.

I don't agree with racism in the sense of "negroes = dumb" at all, but I think there is a lot of laziness and double standards shown by certain people who like to claim the high ground in those respects.

Firstly - this idea that racists are bogged down by human frailties such as the 'us v them' mentality, while those who oppose racism somehow transcend all form of bias or social influence. The reality is they do not. As a social species, it is a natural reaction to want to live in a hormonious society, and racial equality is obviously essential to that. At the more individual level, it is natural to want to avoid confrontation or awkward social situations that would naturally arise from a society that recognised racial differences when different races live side by side every day. Hence why regardless of the truth of the matter, many people will lazily say that they don't believe in racial differences, just.... because they don't.

Secondly - the old gem that since race is not something clear cut by visible indicators such as skin colour; but instead, a fluid transition from groups and sub-groups down to the family and then individual level - we should because of this avoid speaking of race at all and point blank refuse to assess human capability differences beyond the individual level. Of course, refusing to do this is purely willful ignorance, what more can I say about it?

And thirdly - the claim any racial differences observed in terms of IQ performance or other indicators of development are irrelevant since they are the result of differing levels of education or differing work ethics. Now, first of, let me say that I completely agree with what these people say about the inadequacies of IQ tests and supposed controls put in place to account for educational/cultural differences. However, where I think they take liberties is when they simply proclaim that if IQ differences are acknowledged, then the causation must be entirely from education -> IQ, and not the reverse. If a correlation is recognised, then you have to question if there is causation, and if so, in which direction. You can't just decide based on nothing.

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Originally Posted by Hax

Right, and how much do we know about this particular period? I'm not deliberately picking this example to muddy the waters, it's because this is a subject I know a lot about.

Whatever, Yemen/Malta. Could have picked Morocco or Algeria, where self-identification as an Arab still has much more to do with the language people speak at home, rather than haplogroups or whatever. The cultural legacy I can *sort of* understand, but you don't honestly believe that all the Arabic-speaking inhabitants of Egypt (the largest Arabic country in the world) were imported from the Arabian peninsula? The same goes for the inhabitants of Iraq, large parts of the Levant and the entirety of North Africa, up to Sudan and Niger. Additionally, there are more Arabic-speakers in Africa than there are in Asia. Have you ever looked at a Somali? You of all people, would you go along gladly if you were identified as "English" because you speak English?

I chose the example of Arabs and Arabic to demonstrate that the notion of a ethno-linguistic notion doesn't really make any sense.

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Of course ethnic and liguistic groups are not synonymous, but we all can agree that their historic roots have tended to be interconnected on some level - the question is to what degree. As far as I am aware, actual population displacement is often regarded as necessary for one linguistic group to replace another in a particular geographic area, as happened across North Africa and the Middle East with Arab language, culture and religion - thus giving credence to the idea of a modern Arab ethnic identity.

Yes, I realise that analysing population movements and their impact on culture, language, and modern racial identification is a complicated and murky business, especially from a time period we have little information on. But that is precisely why I think it is so inadequate on your part to simply declare that the concept of an 'Arab' means nothing, or has no historical foundation. Or for you to declare that cultural and linguistic developments were entirely independent of population movements. In doing so without any foundation (other than "its not clear cut!), I think you are being every bit as ideologically motivated as you accuse Fragony of being.

Also, the example you give with English in reference to me as a Scot is a great example - the English language is thought to have originated in southern Scotland and Northumbria, as Angles displaced the native Celts in southern Scotland and brought their language roots with them. So even though national identity remains different on either side of the border, the linguistic ties are rooted in a shared ethnic history.

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it is so inadequate on your part to simply declare that the concept of an 'Arab' means nothing, or has no historical foundation.

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And yet, don't you need some support for your tacit claim that "Arab" is a distinct and clear-cut genetic identity applicable uniformly across millions of individuals?

Intelligence is a much thornier issue than race: race is as I've described, but to begin to individuate intelligence(s), we must first determine the functions of every single neuron in at least one human's brain.

And we'd better do it before we begin to precisely modify those neurons and their functions in multitudes of humans...

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

In trying to eliminate racism we are obligated to bring it [the us v them mentaility] up as an issue, because you are asking a society to fight against evolutionary tendencies (which your second is in agreement with, in my opinion). Perhaps some day we'll live in such a peaceful world that all the violent and bigoted genes have been bred out of everyone, but I doubt it.

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I completely agree that it is a relevant issue to bring up. Obviously, while scientific enquiry is perfectly legitimate regardless of motivation, it is equally legitimate to question if the lines of scientific enquiry that we choose to pursue are being constrained by underlying biases. My concern was that with the racism issue, the awareness of these innate biases only existed on one side of the debate.

As for whether bigot or violent genes can be bread out, I have no idea how much such things could be attributed to a particular gene or group of genes, or whether they are much broader traits that reflect wider personalities or social influences.

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

My point was that there is no good measurement of practical intelligence (which is the only kind that you could try and objectively measure as a representative of the whole 'intelligence' of a person--in my opinion). Academic intelligence proves nothing beyond your aptitude for abstract thinking, and your background as living in a situation that allows you to think like that.

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Again I agree completely, acedemic intelligence is fairly small part of the brain function that determines our capabilities, and the sorts of tests used to measure academic intelligence really only measure an even narrower form of intelligence (the ability to perform well on pretty rigid and manipulative/easy to manipulate tests).

btw I was never attacking you in particular, more a general attitude. Everything you have said is valid and need to be said - it's more what is never said that led me to post what I did.

I would like to re-spin the concept of Us vs Them.

If we are destined to make that division, then it matters very much the basis on which we come to make the division.

God must have loved the poor because he made so many of them; God forbid that they should make common cause on that basis, so how convenient to further separate Them on the basis of race. What makes Huckleberry Finn a dangerous book is not its liberal use of the "N" word, rather it is its clear case for the common cause/condition of the poor as poor whether black or white. The fact that the book is set as a youthful adventure just makes it that much more noxious because it could shape the opinions of children.

Which in a long winded way brings me to my point: does the New Jim Crowe accentuate/perpetuate a "useful" division or bring the focus more clearly on the problem of poverty.

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Originally Posted by Montmorency

And yet, don't you need some support for your tacit claim that "Arab" is a distinct and clear-cut genetic identity applicable uniformly across millions of individuals?

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I never claimed it was true, or even tacitly implied such - I only ever said it was a possibility. Hax outright stated it to be untrue, but IMO didn't back his position up. I gave the reasons why I think it is possible.

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

Nice! I forgot we were talking about a book. What's ACIN think?

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Guys, I am reading chapter 1 right now. I got ochem and thermodynamics riding my ass as well. Give me a few days and I will post a summary and my thoughts on each chapter as I read it throughout the next ten weeks.

Or, you know, the species could actively engineer itself out of existence...

I have a devastating confession to make.


For many years I have confirmed, to any who may hear, that:

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Knife rhymes with life, wife, rife, and strife.

Slave rhymes with knave and non-brave.

Weed rhymes with greed, speed, and Rasheed.

Drug rhymes with bug, slug, and thug.

Welfare rhymes with Bel-Air.

Ape rhymes with rape.

Black rhymes with crack, smack, and attack.

****** rhymes with cigger, trigger, and ditch-digger.

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I am indeed the True and Perfect embodiment of the Form of Racism.

I am near, brothers. I am here, brothers.

Sing the agonies of writhing eons and slain gods with me.

Can you see the Meaning?!

:disappointed:

:hanged:

[QUOTE]Of course ethnic and liguistic groups are not synonymous, but we all can agree that their historic roots have tended to be interconnected on some level - the question is to what degree. As far as I am aware, actual population displacement is often regarded as necessary for one linguistic group to replace another in a particular geographic area, as happened across North Africa and the Middle East with Arab language, culture and religion - thus giving credence to the idea of a modern Arab ethnic identity.

Yes, but strangely this did not occur at all with Arabic: although some form of Arabic-speaking communities settled in several locations throughout the Middle-East, it took hundreds of years for a language such as Coptic to disappear (as a spoken language), whereas the Berber languages were never displaced by Arabic at all, and in Khorasan and Transoxiana, Arabic was either spoken very shortly or not at all, as Sogdian, Bactrian and (New) Persian remained the dominant languages for trade and culture, the latter displacing the aforementioned languages.

Then why did Arabic displace Aramaic and Coptic, but didn't displace Persian? To be honest, I have no idea, but it likely has very little to do with national pride or whatever. I think it has much more to do with the fact that Iran was ruled relatively shortly by an Arabic-speaking elite, which was quickly displaced by Persianate rulers and Persian-speaking officials.

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Yes, I realise that analysing population movements and their impact on culture, language, and modern racial identification is a complicated and murky business, especially from a time period we have little information on. But that is precisely why I think it is so inadequate on your part to simply declare that the concept of an 'Arab' means nothing, or has no historical foundation.

---

It is not just complicated, it also makes very little sense when you approach this problem historically. In order to understand the meaning the word Arab, it is necessary to understand the way how people used it: the Qur'an refers to the "Arabs of the desert to be the greatest in disbelief"; the Turks who came to the Middle-East were refered to in historical documents as "Arabs" as well. The actual use of the word probably meant something like "nomad", but to be honest, I have no idea what this means. Perhaps Moros has an idea.

The point I'm trying to make is that the word Arab wasn't used in the ethnical sense for a very long time, and to a large degree, it still isn't. Compare the situation to that in Algeria, Morocco, or Tunisia, where people self-identify on the basis of their (supposed) cultural background. Bringing up the case of Yemen is interesting, as Yemenite soldiers constituted a large part of the early Arabo-Muslim armies (although these people probably didn't speak Arabic), although these people may have very well defined themselves as Arabs, or were called Arabs by others. Or not.

So while there may be a historical foundation for the "ethnicity" of the Arabs, it was more-or-less appropriated by the Arabic-speaking philosophers of the Nahda period, whom I suppose used quite a bit of confirmation bias in order to establish a shared notion of Arabness. Thus, reaching the same conclusion: we have to understand this concept in context of 19th century nationalism.​

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Or for you to declare that cultural and linguistic developments were entirely independent of population movements.

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Yeah, but what? That doesn't make any sense. Of course there are correlations, but we shouldn't overestimate the size of the Arabic-speaking community, especially not in the period after the initial conquest. There are hints that Aramaic was very widely spoken across the Levant up to the 19th century, so it's not unlikely to think there was a sizeable bilingual community of Arabic- and Aramaic-speakers, and that Arabic only fully displaced Aramaic (not counting the pockets of Aramaeophone villages in Syria and Iraq) about a hundred and fifty years ago.

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In doing so without any foundation (other than "its not clear cut!), I think you are being every bit as ideologically motivated as you accuse

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Fragony of being.

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Yes, but no. I study Arabic. It's what I do for a living (more-or-less).

You may be right, but in that case it's because I very strongly disapprove of this concept of a very ill-defined Arabness which is more often that not abused, especially when it comes to anti-Israeli rhetoric.

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Originally Posted by Montmorency

I have a devastating confession to make.


For many years I have confirmed, to any who may hear, that:




I am indeed the True and Perfect embodiment of the Form of Racism.

I am near, brothers. I am here, brothers.

Sing the agonies of writhing eons and slain gods with me.

Can you see the Meaning?!

:disappointed:

:hanged:

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You rhyme real well!!

Rape is indeed a big influencing factor as to why one would think twice before letting people of more rapist cultures into a functional western system of living your life.

As all data show :)

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You rhyme real well!!

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Telling.

:no:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coprolalia

Introduction

Full audio of it found here: Removed

I actually don't know if the Youtube audiobook uploads are legal. So I will not post the links here.

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Originally Posted by The New Jim Crow Pg. 1

Jarvious Cotton cannot vote. Like his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and great-great-grandfather, he has been denied the right to participate in our electoral democracy. Cotton's family tree tells the story of several generations of black men who were born in the United States but who were denied the most basic freedom that democracy promises-the freedom to vote for those who will make the rules and laws that govern one's life. Cotton's great-great-grandfather could not vote as a slave. His great-grandfather was beaten to death by the Ku Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation. His father was barred from voting by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Jarvious Cotton cannot vote because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a felon and is currently on parole.

---

First class was today. According to the syllabus we will not be reading the chapters consecutively but instead diving into chapters 2 and 4 first which is the meaty details on what the New Jim Crow is. Later, we will go back to chapters 1 and 3 for the historical timeline and perspective that highlight parallels between the Old and the New.

Since this is just the introduction, which was basically Michelle Alexander talking about how she started writing about the criminal justice system and what each chapter goes into detail about, I will clarify why I plan on doing a brief summary on each chapter along with some of my thoughts. One reason is that some people in this forum had some questions I could not answer. I do not plan on completely answering them, for a full resolution, you must read the book for yourself. Another is that this semi-joking thread has actually prompted a lengthy discussion that I did not anticipate. Perhaps this thread will die soon, but I hope that by doing these occasional posts, I can bring up points from the book that spur continuing conversations about this topic which seems to defy all attempts (by Americans) at putting to rest. Some members of the forum have already read the book and understand it to a far greater extent than I ever will (SFTS), some are quite distanced from the issue at hand and regard the race aspect of the problem to be a red herring that Americans continue to chase. Either way, I will be eager to read what you all have to say.

I will admit this class I am taking is an intensive research based writing class, I am very interested in hearing what you all have to say in comparison to what a class of ~30 students roughly my age (AKA "my generation") have to say. But I do not plan on taking any of your ideas or discussions as a basis for my writings. In fact our professor explicitly wants us to pursue topics that are tangentially related to the book but capture the spirit of what the issue is (discrimination, exclusion and differentiation between groups). I plan on choosing something a bit distanced from what has been talked about here. I say all this to emphasize what I will say now bluntly, I am not crowd sourcing ideas for me to write about.

With that being said, some interesting things from my class discussion:

* One individual said she wasn't that impressed with the introduction and is skeptical of it all. But she did have the courage to admit that she has a relative in the LAPD so she has conflict of interest in what she thinks.
* One person talked about how he was shocked at how little he was surprised by the main thesis presented by the introduction. Kind of weird to have a reaction towards your own reaction. I was skeptical of his genuineness.
* Most of the class seems to acknowledge being "aware" of active discrimination in society but were unaware of the extent being talked about in the book.

There are bullet points to be made from the intro but without the substance provided in the full chapters it is pointless or even counterproductive to mention them now. I kind of hope this maybe becomes a more successful version of that thread someone made long ago where we were all going to read Aristotle and talk about it like a book club. That was my inspiration anyway.

EDIT: If you guys think this is dumb you can just say so here or in a PM. Many members here are European so perhaps you guys don't really care for paying attention to a very US centered legal/social issue.

Ok. I see that the book then is not a continuation of the dialogue I attribute to Twain.

Might it be closer to Foucault's discussion of the justice system as primarily a method for supplying and maintaining an underclass useful to the dominant culture; with the focus on its affect on a particular demographic ie: black Americans.

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Originally Posted by HopAlongBunny

Ok. I see that the book then is not a continuation of the dialogue I attribute to Twain.

Might it be closer to Foucault's discussion of the justice system as primarily a method for supplying and maintaining an underclass useful to the dominant culture; with the focus on its affect on a particular demographic ie: black Americans.

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From what I have read, I would agree with you. In fact she does use the word "underclass" often in the intro. She even goes as far as to call the whole structure a caste system.

Just because I am not American doesn't mean I mind reading about it.

So, "engineering" on a societal scale using the justice system.

The beauty of it is, by targeting a specific class the system generates the data that justifies both its existence and the targeting of a criminal class. It might fall apart on close inspection but really its all 95% of the population will ever see.

Caste, class, either way there's always someone at the very bottom so the people just above them have someone to piss on so they can feel better about their inability to avoid the streams of the upper levels.

That and to forget that they're aware of the soul crushing knowledge that the human condition is predisposed to this sort of thing and that any attempts to change it will ultimately change nothing beyond the decorations we place around the living urinal that is civilization.

And even more soul crushing is the knowledge of the nigh impossible cost of energy and lives it took/would take to merely find out you can only change the decorations.

Dang, I'm cynical today.

Why is the scope limited only to drugs, why not include other crimes?

MURDER LAWS THE NEW JIM CROWE

How many average Roman Emperors did the following:

Lived seventy years.
Ate chocolate.
Traveled at 100 km/h and survived.
Drank coffee.
Flew and survived.
Used a computer.
Watched a movie.
Read a printed novel.
Surfed the Internet.
Had access to antibiotics.

Yeah, no progress at all.

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Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump

Why is the scope limited only to drugs, why not include other crimes?

MURDER LAWS THE NEW JIM CROWE

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I haven't read the book. If it relies on statistical analysis then you run into the problem of all statistical studies: cohort choice; cohort size; representative?; ...etc. You can criticize the study on a number of grounds and charge bias, but after looking at the criticisms you still have to assess whether the study makes the case it set out to make. ACIN needs to read faster :whip:

The big question I have is:

Since when did people start actually reading the literature given while studying...? I mean, apart from the last 3 days before the exams? Don't ACIN have beers to drink and women to fondle?

Apparently I was too quick to accept the demise of the "divide and conquer" thesis:

http://youtu.be/P75cbEdNo2U

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Originally Posted by HoreTore

The big question I have is:

Since when did people start actually reading the literature given while studying...? I mean, apart from the last 3 days before the exams? Don't ACIN have beers to drink and women to fondle?

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HoreTore, as a socialist Scandinavian, thinking You belong on some sort of intellectual scene after a few years of the socialist "University" everyone should attend after their state ordered studies - I can SO see Your argument.

But see, then I left the socialist university world, and joined one where academical progress counts.

Of course, that has made it more or less impossible for me to go on with my work as teacher, as I quite frankly deem those who have studied on the level You have to be absolute morons in pedagogical questions. Not to mention many other questions.

I wouldn't trust You to teach even math without adding on some feminist propaganda and socialistic overtones.

Frankly, I see You as one of the teachers who would write his own math tests just because the examples given in the book didn't correspond to Your world view. You would use as many foreign names as you could in the math examples, to teach the kids that foreign names are not foreign, but normal. You would make sure the examples mentioned boys and girls 50/50... Just joking.

Of course it wouldn't just be 50/50, You would also make sure to put the genders in cross-gender situations to try and diminish the oh so horrible historical social gender roles.

I might be wrong, but it is the impression I got. And what truly saddens me is that I think You are proud of it.

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Originally Posted by Kadagar_AV

I wouldn't trust You to teach even math without adding on some feminist propaganda and socialistic overtones.

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I seriously hope you are joking.

~Jirisys ()

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Originally Posted by jirisys

I seriously hope you are joking.

~Jirisys ()

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Kadagar doesn't seem to get irony in text format... Or I'm just bad at making jokes, I guess. I got a good chuckle out of his though.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HoreTore

Kadagar doesn't seem to get irony in text format... Or I'm just bad at making jokes, I guess. I got a good chuckle out of his though.

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No irony in religion, and you are deeply religious. Kadagar nails you

Yeah brah, you got nailed bad there. srsly.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Hax

Yeah brah, you got nailed bad there. srsly.

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So did Jesus.

So... I'm your messiah now, right?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jirisys

I seriously hope you are joking.

~Jirisys ()

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Ask him? As I said, I think HT is proud of the fact that he is a good enough teacher to be able to BOTH teach math AND help the kids into the politically correct thinking at the same time.

HT, amIrite?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HoreTore

So did Jesus.

So... I'm your messiah now, right?

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It's called the leftist church for a reason, Jezus, you see him, everywhere. The Nobel peace-price peace commision is always a good place to start looking for who is the Messias of the leftist church, it's blissfuly obvious every time

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kadagar_AV

HT, amIrite?

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No, dead wrong.

Did I honestly have to state that....?

EDIT: Though you are right that I usually make(or rather made, since I don't teach maths this year) my own math problems instead of using those in the textbook. You are, however, as wrong as you can be on the reason why I do that.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by HoreTore

No, dead wrong.

Did I honestly have to state that....?

EDIT: Though you are right that I usually make(or rather made, since I don't teach maths this year) my own math problems instead of using those in the textbook. You are, however, as wrong as you can be on the reason why I do that.

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So when giving math problems, You didn't add extra immigrant names to the examples or put the persons in stereotypical cross gender situations? I have no idea, of course. I have just seen enough Norwegian (and Swedish) teachers think this practise normal, for me to kind of suspect You, given they generally hold and defend the same world view as You.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Kadagar_AV

So when giving math problems, You didn't add extra immigrant names to the examples or put the persons in stereotypical cross gender situations? I have no idea, of course. I have just seen enough Norwegian (and Swedish) teachers think this practise normal, for me to kind of suspect You, given they generally hold and defend the same world view as You.

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I see no reason to respond to such ridiculous statements.

Sometimes, what one person regards as a standard social interaction, another person will see as being charged with political or ideological currents. This can be far more sutble than whether or not HoreTore goes out of his way to make examples where his students have to tell him how many apples Ahmed has. To observe this isn't ludicrous - language has always reflected the societies it develops in. The very way we address someone can reveal the social expectations that are imposed on them.

For example, are we socially engineering and indoctrinating kids when we refer to them either as 'boy' or 'girl'?

IIRC, it was a Scandinavian school or nursery that was in the news a few months back for banning such a practice. To us it seems like they are the ones bringing politics into everyday language, but in their minds they are removing it. Maybe in a couple of hundred years our descendants will look at us as bigots and wonder how we could ever think it was right to refer to people differently based purely on their gender.

Regardless of who is right, political and social ideas will be expressed in everyday things.

Indeed, the fact that Kadagar is Scandinavian probably explains his concern with these trends - he is on the front link of these developments.*

*Although the Scandivanians weren't the first in this regard, the Quakers once abandoned gender-based references such as him or her in favour of thee, thou and the like.

The discussion of education as indoctrination belongs to another thread; simply put, teaching is almost by definition indoctrination: learn this, this is important, you will be tested on this; the very act of assigning importance and meaning to subjects is indoctrination.

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objectively examining all the facts of the world

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That's impossible and you know it.

It will remain impossible even after we deploy technologies for the downloading of declarative memories.

Alright. How about:

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There is a standard of objectivity that we could probably all agree on.

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Delusion.

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If you aren't actively questioning every source of information you get, you're a sheep.

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And no one is - because that's not physiologically possible for humans.

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you're probably going to be more objective than someone who isn't.

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Please explain your understanding of "objectivity".

I come at the question from the PoV of my second degree. Education at the primary level is indoctrination: meaning and value is assigned to academic subjects quite independent of the value the students put on them. Every social interaction is a case of modeling whether you acknowledge it or not. "Taking turns", listening to a speaker, politeness, inquisitiveness...etc. Everything(!) is to some extent indoctrination: the basics of "how to act" primarily in an institution, and also as a social being.

It's not evil; it's how we learn to become human.

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Originally Posted by HopAlongBunny

I come at the question from the PoV of my second degree. Education at the primary level is indoctrination: meaning and value is assigned to academic subjects quite independent of the value the students put on them. Every social interaction is a case of modeling whether you acknowledge it or not. "Taking turns", listening to a speaker, politeness, inquisitiveness...etc. Everything(!) is to some extent indoctrination: the basics of "how to act" primarily in an institution, and also as a social being.

It's not evil; it's how we learn to become human.

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You need to make a major distinction here.

The first, which you described now, is the classroom learning environment.

The second, described by GC, is the subject(s) being taught.

Two very different standards apply to those. For the first, I demand the right to be Absolute Dictator For Life. For example, you may feel that certain persons or certain things should not be said. I don't give a crap, I will decide who may speak and what may be said. I will base my decision on my own education, by keeping up with current research and cooperaton with my colleagues and my boss(es).

For the second, you can believe whatever the hell you like, and I have no interest in what that may be apart from general curiosity. They'll be measured by how well they fulfill these criteria.

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Originally Posted by HopAlongBunny

"Taking turns", listening to a speaker, politeness, inquisitiveness...etc. Everything(!) is to some extent indoctrination: the basics of "how to act" primarily in an institution, and also as a social being.

It's not evil; it's how we learn to become human.

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I disagree. Humanity is by nature innate. If that part of our humanity that makes us social beings leads us to join together in common institutions, then that is great and a pure reflection of our humanity.

On the other hand, if our concept of humanity is being conditioned by institutions through indoctrination, then the institutions cease to be an expression of an independent force (our innate humanity), and become an independent force in their own right - as such the institutions themselves actually shape our very concept of humanity and social interaction. When this happens, this is something undesirable, if not quite evil.

I dislike a lot of things about the modern world because of this, and not just the sort of things old people grumble about. One thing I particularly hate is the modern education system. Apart from being an extremely unhealthy environment for children, the education system is the prime means of maintaning social division and economic oppression. In terms of its counterintuitiveness it is second only to the prison system.

There is simply no such thing as unbiasedness.

Let me be more forceful: it is metaphysically impossible.

To think is to be biased.

To act is to be biased.

Only the dead are unbiased, if only because the collective function of billions of neurons, which we abstract upwards and ascribe something called "intention" to, no longer function as anything other than food.

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

Well, no, he's got a point. Look at any of the documented cases where a child was abandoned in the wilderness and never knew human contact. They acted like animals, and had less in common with a human than your average chimpanzee, at first. Humans learn how to be human from other humans. Humans learn everything from other humans. Which is why when we learn about politics, we're working on the Honor System. If you can't trust the people who are supposed to be objective to be objective then that Honor System isn't doing so well.

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The condition of feral children is I believe less down to their lacking the chance to 'learn' to be human, and more down to the fact that their humanity is suppressed by an unnatural environment. If we are kept in an unnatural environment our mindset and our behaviour will as a result become unnatural.

Take for example, government. One the one hand, government can be a pure reflection of society so long as it has strong grassroots connections. On the other hand, when it becomes removed from these organic roots and becomes something artificial, then involvement in that artificial situation actually alters who we are as people (for example, North Korea). When this happens, the very fact that the conditions are not natural is a bad thing - because what motivates us and makes us happy is the pursuit and expression of what is natural to our human condition. And it is that way because that is how we are biologically wired as humans

Actually I would go further. The human is a learning machine; first and foremost it will learn any behaviour that is rewarded by fulfilling the 3F's of survival; anything beyond that is, as Greyblades said earlier: "rearranging the decorations"

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But everyone is also capable of comprehending the idea of being unbiased.

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Yes - this is wrong. What's not to get?

You can't strive toward an ill-defined imaginary abstraction.

Let me put this another way.

Would you say that everything that occurs within the universe is possible within the universe?

Yes, you would. This is by definition.

And would you agree that what is impossible to occur in the universe, does not occur in the universe?

I think you would. This is merely the other side of the definition.

So, with the above in mind, wouldn't it be rather silly to assert that possibility is a gradient and that it is possible to approach impossibility?

Allowing that one can not attain impossibility and witness or perform an impossible thing does not get you out of it. You must see that one possible thing is no more or less possible than another.

Divorce this thought from any notion of stochasticity, which is something entirely distinct.

All things are merely either possible, or impossible.

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In the eyes of society, a raving madman who sees only what he wants to see is not as desirable as a rational and considerate person who views things from many angles before acting. This is, like, common sense.

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What you describe is not a difference in degree of bias, but a different flavor of bias. The "madman" is only mad because his frame of reference irreconcilably contradicts "society's"; both are equally biased.

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What's your angle?

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I'm pushing my epistemology. In terms of my epistemology, what you're saying is no more than self-indulgent gibberish. :shrug:

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Every last aspect of civilization that could be considered good or convenient is against nature in some fashion.

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Of course, everything that is possible is natural. Therefore, everything that exists is natural. More of my philosophy.

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But how do you apply that to the issue of political bias in the classroom?

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That's not really my concern here.

If you want an opinion: the parents can go ahead and work to discern whichever academic "party line" the teachers are delivering to their students; how much you like this will vary depending on which "party lines" are most prominent in your chosen geographic region

But my opinion will be change if I don my Statist hat...

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If I'm self-indulgent, what are you?

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A ventriloquist?

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Originally Posted by Montmorency

So, with the above in mind, wouldn't it be rather silly to assert that possibility is a gradient and that it is possible to approach impossibility?

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That's called math.
lim -> 0 --> sinx/x=1. Or integrals for that matter.

MATH THE NEW JIM CROW

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

Don't take me so literally. There is a standard of objectivity that we could probably all agree on. My point was that you should develop your own politics through experience and learning, not from your school, parents, favorite TV show, or any of that. If you aren't actively questioning every source of information you get, you're a sheep. If you are, you're probably going to be more objective than someone who isn't.

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But your experience and learning includes what your parents, teachers and others say and think. Add to this that so many people work all day to earn their food and roof that they don't feel like actively questioning everything in their free time because to them it's even more work and they just had >= 8 hours of that. It's also hard to form your own opinion through learning and experience when it comes to the universe for example. How many people have their own large hadron collider or radio telescope to get their own experiences with that? The results from those scientists are never objective even if they try. Their interpretations etc. are shaped by their world view, their knowledge and their own experiences and learning, even from other non-objective sources.
Even Einstein had a religious side and didn't feel comfortable with the view that science could or would disprove the existance of a god IIRC.

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Originally Posted by Montmorency

And no one is - because that's not physiologically possible for humans.

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~D

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

Bull. Everyone has bias, yes. Everyone has perspective tailored to experience that overrides objectivity in some way or another, yes. But everyone is also capable of comprehending the idea of being unbiased. Everyone is capable of striving for that. And I think we can all agree that that's a good thing to strive for, yes?

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I disagree, a man who is not able to form an opinion and stand by it in the face of adversity has no backbone and is not a real man.
Not necessarily my view but I read statements of that sort elsewhere. So I'm pretty sure we don't all agree that striving to be objective is a good thing. ~;)
I've mentioned this before, but in an experiment people were given the choice of either both getting 200$ or the person asked gets 150 and the other person gets only 100. Even though option 1 is better for both, most people chose option 2, proving that they care more about the relative value and the comparison with others than what is good for everyone or even rationally better for themselves. I got that from a TV show, which is probably not unbiased (for example, if they were the only two people in the world, option 2 would make more sense, but I doubt that was the scenario), but I can see how the world often works like this. To expect everyone to try to be unbiased, objective and rational seems like an exercise in futility. When you fall in love, do you exclusively consult unbiased sources to get to an objective conclusion about your relationship?

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Originally Posted by Ironside

That's called math.
lim -> 0 --> sinx/x=1. Or integrals for that matter.

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lim x --> 0, that is. Thanks to Mr L'Hopital's discovery of using differentiation to get around pesky division by 0.

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Originally Posted by Major Robert Dump

MATH THE NEW JIM CROW

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Yes, quite. If only established elites learned to do Math they might be able to run a budget and Jim Crow would not see his standard of living get cut 'cause the big guys spent it all in advance on more and bigger guns, shiny Ponzi schemes and robocall companies. ~;)

Or, on the other hand, what if Jim Crow learned to do Math ...

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Originally Posted by HopAlongBunny

I come at the question from the PoV of my second degree. Education at the primary level is indoctrination: meaning and value is assigned to academic subjects quite independent of the value the students put on them. Every social interaction is a case of modeling whether you acknowledge it or not. "Taking turns", listening to a speaker, politeness, inquisitiveness...etc. Everything(!) is to some extent indoctrination: the basics of "how to act" primarily in an institution, and also as a social being.

It's not evil; it's how we learn to become human.

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Ironically this part of indoctrination makes us objectively better at being human and surviving for longer.

I think the issue goes more like this (someone correct me if I'm out to lunch): An objective point of view is a delusion. As biological beings fitted with the sensory capability we have, the only PoV accessible to us is the PoV that our limited capabilities allow us to perceive. An objective PoV would not be intelligible (period) We can conceive beyond the realms of gross perception; extending the sense through sophisticated devices; creating artificial systems; but still it is as the old saw goes: not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is likely stranger than we can imagine.

I don't think you were trying to make that claim in your discussion of "objective PoV" but taken literally and w/o qualification it is what you were saying.

Sorry for starting a hornets nest and then withdrawing...

May I start with saying I was rude towards HT. I have ABSOLUTELY no evidence that he in any way would treat his children wrong in the classroom.

However, working as a Scandinavian teacher, quitting my job as a scandinavian teacher, I have seen so many people (a VERY VERY VERY vast majority) absolutely throw clear thinking aside to go with a multicultural and feminist agenda, as they hit a classroom full of kids.

For THEM, it's the liberating and correct thing to do.

And in a way, I cant argue against them.

YES INDEED the world would be a better place if we were one happy big collective.
YES INDEED the world would be a better place if men and women were all the same.

And here comes the kicker... We might, or might not, one day reach there!

But on the way there, why are we trying to skip all the steps?

No, some Somali-negroe family will not anytime soon be a good investment as a tax base in a Scandinavian country.
No girls won't anytime soon fit the criteria for hunter (jaegaer/rangers) anytime soon.

My problem with teaching in Sweden (specifically) was that we had one blueprint of how the world looked, and one blueprint of how the world should be. Unfortunately, the worlds had nothing in common, and there were no directions as to how to bridge the gap.

And HELL YEAH, I had to try not to puke as I saw these socialistic state trained teachers go on their daily day to day working life.

I can't speak for Norway now, but in Sweden the BIG thing in school is "Every human beings equal value".

Equal value in what?

No really, I can respect some general right for moderate respect for other human beings... But IMAGINE the shipload of logical fallacies when You try to adhere to "everyones equal value" in a classroom setting.

Again, HT might be the best teacher ever. But as said, the ideas and views he holds in dogma there, so for me it's just another sheep.


With that said, I am still sure he is better than 95% of his colleagues as he actually do an honest attempt to have political discussions, like on this board.

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

But is there seriously a one among you who thinks that trying to be unbiased is a waste of time? If there is, please, tell me why.

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I don't know about us, but you guys obviously are horribly biased. ~;)

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

In the words of one of my favorite people: Its good to come to a compromise in a situation, but its another thing entirely to compromise yourself in a situation. There's a line between being having a backbone and being an obstinate douche, and I don't think that line needs explaining to most people. Even the ones who know they're being douches.

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But even the whole backbone thing may make you horribly biased already.

People actively choose to be biased one way or another very often, goes along with building groups IMHO. The cohesion of the group is then strengthened by a choice to defend that group against "the others", be they individuals or other groups. It happens in sports, on the school playground, in companies and elsewhere. People will defend their group members sometimes even though they know they are wrong, simply because their lizard brain or the wolf brain or whatever tells them not to "betray" someone from their herd. All competitive sports is created to a certain degree to create antagony where there was none so we can indulge in more "us vs them" behaviour. Capitalism is based on the human need to place yourself on top of others instead of finding a rational compromise and people always say that's exactly why it works so well.

That's why I'm not sure about your point that everybody strives to be unbiased, maybe people even delude themselves to think their own bias is the "unbiased" position to take but in the end they often create a bias where no bias was before. I'm not a studied expert on that subject but to me it seems like a relatively human trait, probably related to the monkeysphere and general human social tendencies that do not extend very far considering the amount of inhabitants the planet has today.

My goodness this is pointlessly off topic.

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Originally Posted by Greyblades

My goodness this is pointlessly off topic.

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This is the backroom! Skip the first pages and go straight for a personal punch!! The topic is what we decide it to be, and the new one is "Does bananas bend left or right?"

Yea, our guiding light has abandoned us. Without ACIN we are doomed to wander through the dark back-alleys of epistemology and whatever else strikes our fancy.

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Originally Posted by HopAlongBunny

Yea, our guiding light has abandoned us. Without ACIN we are doomed to wander through the dark back-alleys of epistemology and whatever else strikes our fancy.

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I said I had a busy schedule, my due date to read chapter 2 is a week from Tuesday, so I'm sorry if I choose to spend my time doing ochem or thermo. The conversation has been quite interesting anyway.

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Originally Posted by HopAlongBunny

For those like me who wondered what that was about:

:on_gwow:

http://youtu.be/6cbfgmorIGE

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Now imagine if some Mormons had the idea of covering Mormon tanks with this magical garnment and attacked the Federal Government with them. It would be the end of the US.

I was reading one review of this book which basically asserts the book is "historically blind". It jumps from the "Jim Crow" era to its modern manifestation and essentially ignores the intervening period.

It would seem a convenient oversight to ignore the civil rights movement, black panthers, the numerous leaders and movements that mobilized (and disappeared/transformed) over a large span of history. One might be tempted to charge that it "cooks" the data.