I apologize to everyone.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Over this next quarter, I will have to read the entire book, "The New Jim Crow" by Michelle Alexander. So if all my arguments are straight regurgitation from the book, it's because I will be spending my time writing a paper every week on a different aspect of the books arguments.

I promise I will do better when I am not force fed this book after my quarter is over.

[Major Robert Dump]

Is that a new kind of bourbon or something?

[HopAlongBunny]

Force-fed whiskey? doesn't sound all bad but keep your regurgitation to yourself please.

[a completely inoffensive name]

If I was force fed whiskey I would die easily, since I don't drink.

I live and act like a devout Mormon in many ways, even though I am an atheist (I go out of my way to not drink coffee because I don't want to become reliant on the caffeine). My alcohol tolerance is approximately 0%.

[Montmorency]

Liquor tastes like soap to me.

[Conradus]

Liquor tastes like soap to me.

I suggest changing the labels of your booze.

[Beskar]

Liquor tastes like soap to me.

I always thought of alcohol tasting more as like Nail-varnish remover (Which has alcohol in it, go figure).

[jirisys]

I live and act like a devout Mormon in many ways

Magical underwear nonwithstanding?

~Jirisys ()

[HopAlongBunny]

Magical underwear nonwithstanding?

~Jirisys ()

For those like me who wondered what that was about:

[a completely inoffensive name]

Magical underwear nonwithstanding?

~Jirisys ()

lol, no lucky underwear. But I do have a lucky shirt I have worn since middle school.

[Rhyfelwyr]

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.

[HopAlongBunny]

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.

[Montmorency]

objectively examining all the facts of the world

That's impossible and you know it.

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

[Montmorency]

Alright. How about:

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

Delusion.

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

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

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

Please explain your understanding of "objectivity".

[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.

[Husar]

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.

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.

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

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?

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?