Change! We're not a minority! - Page 2
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hypercube
Hungary2735 Posts
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Tortious_Tortoise
United States944 Posts
On September 10 2011 22:15 OmniEulogy wrote: I have no clue what started the human rights debate... after re-reading everything like 5 times the only conclusion I can come up with is I disagree with both Zombie and mbr. On one side we have "Human rights = Greed and Corruption" vs some sort of humanitarian bs that sounds great but isn't reasonable to complain to us about. + Show Spoiler + mbr western human rights. that phrase has nothing to do with North Korea or China. its how OUR countries view it not theirs. We are all aware that they are treated poorly. It has nothing to do with what Zombie said afterwards. In western society Equal Rights have been taken a bit too far. it's no longer about 'equality' its about being treated 'special' because you are different. It is still about equality. The reason people think that it's about being treated 'special' is that there are still some people that equate having equal rights with being treated 'special.' This whole debate has gotten too nebulous, so here's exactly what I'm talking about: Free speech, even on the internet, is too important to compromise for TL quality posts. To live in a society without free speech is to live in a society without a voice, which leads to all sorts of governmental abuses of power. Without this right to speech, this inalienable right, western society would be subject to all the abuses of power to which countries like North Korea are subjected: oppression, slaughter. That is not worth an 'intellectual' internet. EDIT: fixed the quote | ||
whitelly
Czech Republic50 Posts
btw is it about "their bs" or is it "my voice is not loud and cant be heard and that hurt me becouse i know how things should be"? | ||
oberhofer
Germany98 Posts
On September 10 2011 23:28 whitelly wrote: You know that "trolls" are usualy smater part of population? btw is it about "their bs" or is it "my voice is not loud and cant be heard and that hurt me becouse i know how things should be"? If "finding joy in provocation" = "smart" then yes. Other than that I wouldn't generalize. (ironic, I know) What's the point of your question? I made my intentions... uhm.. kinda clear in my previous posts. | ||
Zombie_Velociraptor
274 Posts
The whole 'freedom' thing is just like communism - it would work great in a perfect society, unfortunately humanity is flawed and so it really doesn't work at all. There needs to be a degree of responsibility for one's words just as people should be responsible for their actions. Doesn't mean a brutal police state a'la North Korea is the only 'right' way; it does mean though, that if someone is causing others undue distress, there should be some sort of repercussions - to some extent, forum moderators etc on the Internet fulfil that role, just like getting punched in the face for being a douchebag does it IRL. Unfortunately, it's too simple to shuffle your IP or use a proxy etc to register multiple accounts and continue being a nuisance should one desire so; or use hacks in online games, or whatever. Having some sort of 'Internet Police' and moving more towards using static IPs wouldn't be too awful of a thing in this regard, really. The problem is, as soon as somebody is given the power to control whatever, let's say Internet content in this case, they are likely to be biased, even without being corrupt, thus bringing double standards and jaded opinions; hell, even a completely infallible and impartial jury would bring a lot of flak unto itself, simply because people can't admit and accept being guilty - such is the human nature. On the other hand, 'complete' freedom usually result in anarchy, which is probably worse. It's about finding acceptable balance; and in my opinion, in our times, the balance is tipping a little bit too far onto the 'tolerance' and 'freedom' side in some regards, both in terms of online content, and offline matters. Edit: a little more to do with the original subject, what really sucks is, trolls and such are usually indeed quite intelligent - or at least not really stupid; just that they enjoy, for whatever reasons, to aggravate other people - which is again, a problem with our society in general, and lack of responsibility in particular. Some people simply enjoy causing others grief, and in the last few years, this kind of behaviour is pretty much made out to be acceptable, even the 'right' way to act, what with people defending all sorts of bad manner and trolling. I mean, when someone like Destiny or Idra gets thousands of followers because it's 'fun' to see them badmouth their opponents and trashtalk at every opportunity, how can you be surprised at the fact that 'fuck you' is more common than 'good game' at the end of a Starcraft match? | ||
Artifice
United States523 Posts
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jdseemoreglass
United States3773 Posts
Obviously people have different opinions on what is dumb/smart, right/wrong, good/bad. If you want to take your opinion as the objective truth, which most people prefer to do, then accept that other people will always be "delusional" and not "open-minded" enough to see your logic. Or maybe realize that being "open-minded" means not thinking everything you know is right, and everyone who thinks or behaves differently than you do is somehow inferior or stupid. EDIT: On September 11 2011 00:15 Zombie_Velociraptor wrote: It's about finding acceptable balance; and in my opinion, in our times, the balance is tipping a little bit too far onto the 'tolerance' and 'freedom' side in some regards, both in terms of online content, and offline matters. WTF?! Are you kidding me? You honestly think we are tipping towards too much freedom? | ||
Harrad
1003 Posts
On September 10 2011 22:33 oberhofer wrote: So you're saying unproper spelling and capitalization hints at an ex-nazi? Apart from that, I agree that presentation is part of the message, still, how is it pseudo-intellectual? Elaborate please. Dunno, he looks and sounds like it. If not, he's still coming off as a conceited smugface I wouldn't want to come across irl. But fair enough, I'll try to "elaborate". + Show Spoiler + the problem with dumb people is that sadly it is not possible for them to grasp that they are just that, they are dense. ?????.... Firstly, he fails to define what exactly he defines as "stupid" or "stupid people" for that matter. Are they "dense" because they lack the knowledge intelligent people have or because they lack the capacity to ever grasp and process knowledge the way intelligent people do and therefore are forever stuck in their stupidity, or are those "stupid people" simply not interested in expanding their horizon because they lack the knowledge and therefore insight that would provide them with the tools to do so? This is very lazy and amateurish, hence I label it as pseudo-intellectual. + Show Spoiler + a reasonably intelligent person knows that he is stupid. When he enters a room he knows that there might be someone in the room who is more intelligent than himself and looks forward to learn something about that person. "i know that, that i dont know nothing", or worse "i know i'm probably not going understand a fraction of it before i drop dead". Not because one is too stupid for it, but because each question prompts two new ones and the time for answers just is not enough, that makes the difference and is a good prerequisite to improve on one's own stupidity. This is very confusing and makes little sense. Of course, in a social environment you are guaranteed to encounter people with greater or lesser knowledge practical and/or theoretical knowledge, this should be a given. Saying that a "reasonably intelligent" person knows that he or she is stupid is a very peculiar statement. Other than the fact that he has still not established reasonable standards as to how we are how supposed to identify a "stupid" person as such, WHY would that person label it self as stupid? Because there might be someone in the vicinity who has greater knowledge on something in a complex world with countless fields of expertise??? How the fuck does that make sense? And the rest of the paragraph basically says that stupid to "reasonably intelligent" people are that because they are not able to make concise inquiries to gain the knowledge they need to not be stupid anymore. Are you fucking kidding me?.. + Show Spoiler + stupid people don't want to change nothing, especially not themselves and their way to understand things Another incredibly stupid statement. You don't need to be an intelligent person to have needs and wants, which means that even "stupid" people would feel the urge to change things around them if they were to conflict with said needs and wants. Also, there is no right or wrong way to understand things, you either do understand them or you don't. + Show Spoiler + Not only because, as a human being, one can only understand because one has learned to understand and our free will seems to be but a pathetic construct to keep our ego entertained Then how does one "learn to understand"? Why do stupid people supposedly understand differently than intelligent people? Another very vague point that basically says nothing at all. Poor. Furthermore, this guy doesn't seem to have a clue what free will is, so he isn't exactly qualified to make any assumptions about it. There first thing you have to know about free will is that there is no free will. At least not in the way you'd think. You see all our behavior is controlled by the brain. The brain is composed of chemicals. Those react to outside stimulus, to signals which interact with the brain, changing its chemical and physical state. Say you tell me a joke. I hear it and its sounds come into my brain through my ears and are translated into electro-chemical activity. The language parts of my brain recognize what the words I hear mean. The joke relies on my understanding of the information contained in the joke which I need in order to recognize the humor in it which would make me laugh. I could give more and better examples, but I think you get what I'm saying and how that guy's statement is utterly retarded. Then his entire spiel about "stupid people" somehow turns into whining about the current state of People on the Internet. Interestingly, there's no correlation to his questionable theories on "stupid people" to be found. What he laments is not the stupidity of people, but their increasingly complacent mindset with which they get on the internet nowadays (classic case of 'the pot calling the kettle black'). Because the Internet grants a certain degree of anonymity and plenty opportunities for repercussion-less self-entitlement all along the time, abuse is a very natural result. Many people, mostly very intelligent people, seek to create "artificial realities" using the internet as an escape for themselves, that isn't supportive of his point at all. Well from this point on his ramblings just keep on spiraling down into utter ignorant retardedness. I'm not going to give my opinion on that "neanderthals" vs "homo sapiens" bullshit, that's too low for me. + Show Spoiler + Empathy separates, without it being really spelled out, the people as if you were confronted with two different species - Neanderthals and Homo sapiens have unified themselves to humankind and sadly one can not tell which species they belong to anymore. The problem hereby is less that it may take a while until one knows that a person belongs in the category galoot with cave fixation and latent hostility against everything that has not lived in a cave and is somehow "foreign". Instead i'm going to give a little lesson on empathy. In life, nothing is for free. Neither is empathy. The general rule is "If you do right by me, I'll do right by you. If you are good to me, I'll be good to you. Say you invite me to a party in your house and later it turns out I made a mess in your bath room, badmouthed your other guests, told lies about you to your girlfriends, been very spiteful in general. Would you invite me again? Friendships are investments, you devote time and energy to socialize with the other person, expecting to receive the same kind of commitment in return. If that is not the case you will most likely discontinue the friendship as it is not a beneficial relationship to you. It's give and take. If I want to be treated with empathy from the people that matter to me I'd be careful to not trash talk them, be polite and respectful in my dealings with them, treat them the way I'd like to be treated. This limits me in a way that I can't always express myself the way I'd actually want to, because I'm feeling emphatic towards my friends and don't want to hurt their feelings, so I express myself differently or more moderate than I normally would. In the end, my goal as a social human being would be to receive empathy from as many people as possible while making as little concessions as possible. In the end, there are no fucking Neanderthals anymore, but a single humankind we all belong to. In the end, we all live on the same planet and have to get along with each other. In the end, in a world full of people of different cultures, ethnicities, age, varying degrees of competence and many other societal factors, our primary goal as humankind should be to accept as many of those differences as humanly possible in order to achieve peaceful co-existence alongside each other, as opposed to discrimination, persecution, war, starvation and many other cruelties caused by those groups of people who would abuse those differences for selfish purposes. Atrocities such as committed in Norway this year only came to be because those groups have been very successful in segregating the population to the point that mentally ill fanatics would go on such killing sprees purely out of conviction. I could go on with this, but I honestly don't feel like it anymore. I myself am far from being a perfect person, I get defensive and aggressive really fast, tend to treat people unfairly when I'm angry, get frustrated easily, never had many friends but I know one thing; I love human beings. I love that there are smart people, not-so-smart people, people who look very differently from the way I and people in my country look, people who are funny, people who are serious, people who are just being themselves, people who are very talented, people who are not so talented but always try their best, people who are competitive, people who accept for what they are, the list goes on and on. | ||
Zombie_Velociraptor
274 Posts
WTF?! Are you kidding me? You honestly think we are tipping towards too much freedom? Freedom is perhaps not the right word (and not really what the OP is talking about either), perhaps irresponsibility is more fitting. People feel like they're 'free' to do whatever the hell they please, and there will not be any repercussions for it - and that tends to bring out the worst in some. | ||
oberhofer
Germany98 Posts
On September 11 2011 03:25 Harrad wrote: + Show Spoiler + On September 10 2011 22:33 oberhofer wrote: So you're saying unproper spelling and capitalization hints at an ex-nazi? Apart from that, I agree that presentation is part of the message, still, how is it pseudo-intellectual? Elaborate please. Dunno, he looks and sounds like it. If not, he's still coming off as a conceited smugface I wouldn't want to come across irl. But fair enough, I'll try to "elaborate". + Show Spoiler + the problem with dumb people is that sadly it is not possible for them to grasp that they are just that, they are dense. ?????.... Firstly, he fails to define what exactly he defines as "stupid" or "stupid people" for that matter. Are they "dense" because they lack the knowledge intelligent people have or because they lack the capacity to ever grasp and process knowledge the way intelligent people do and therefore are forever stuck in their stupidity, or are those "stupid people" simply not interested in expanding their horizon because they lack the knowledge and therefore insight that would provide them with the tools to do so? This is very lazy and amateurish, hence I label it as pseudo-intellectual. + Show Spoiler + a reasonably intelligent person knows that he is stupid. When he enters a room he knows that there might be someone in the room who is more intelligent than himself and looks forward to learn something about that person. "i know that, that i dont know nothing", or worse "i know i'm probably not going understand a fraction of it before i drop dead". Not because one is too stupid for it, but because each question prompts two new ones and the time for answers just is not enough, that makes the difference and is a good prerequisite to improve on one's own stupidity. This is very confusing and makes little sense. Of course, in a social environment you are guaranteed to encounter people with greater or lesser knowledge practical and/or theoretical knowledge, this should be a given. Saying that a "reasonably intelligent" person knows that he or she is stupid is a very peculiar statement. Other than the fact that he has still not established reasonable standards as to how we are how supposed to identify a "stupid" person as such, WHY would that person label it self as stupid? Because there might be someone in the vicinity who has greater knowledge on something in a complex world with countless fields of expertise??? How the fuck does that make sense? And the rest of the paragraph basically says that stupid to "reasonably intelligent" people are that because they are not able to make concise inquiries to gain the knowledge they need to not be stupid anymore. Are you fucking kidding me?.. + Show Spoiler + stupid people don't want to change nothing, especially not themselves and their way to understand things Another incredibly stupid statement. You don't need to be an intelligent person to have needs and wants, which means that even "stupid" people would feel the urge to change things around them if they were to conflict with said needs and wants. Also, there is no right or wrong way to understand things, you either do understand them or you don't. + Show Spoiler + Not only because, as a human being, one can only understand because one has learned to understand and our free will seems to be but a pathetic construct to keep our ego entertained Then how does one "learn to understand"? Why do stupid people supposedly understand differently than intelligent people? Another very vague point that basically says nothing at all. Poor. Furthermore, this guy doesn't seem to have a clue what free will is, so he isn't exactly qualified to make any assumptions about it. There first thing you have to know about free will is that there is no free will. At least not in the way you'd think. You see all our behavior is controlled by the brain. The brain is composed of chemicals. Those react to outside stimulus, to signals which interact with the brain, changing its chemical and physical state. Say you tell me a joke. I hear it and its sounds come into my brain through my ears and are translated into electro-chemical activity. The language parts of my brain recognize what the words I hear mean. The joke relies on my understanding of the information contained in the joke which I need in order to recognize the humor in it which would make me laugh. I could give more and better examples, but I think you get what I'm saying and how that guy's statement is utterly retarded. Then his entire spiel about "stupid people" somehow turns into whining about the current state of People on the Internet. Interestingly, there's no correlation to his questionable theories on "stupid people" to be found. What he laments is not the stupidity of people, but their increasingly complacent mindset with which they get on the internet nowadays (classic case of 'the pot calling the kettle black'). Because the Internet grants a certain degree of anonymity and plenty opportunities for repercussion-less self-entitlement all along the time, abuse is a very natural result. Many people, mostly very intelligent people, seek to create "artificial realities" using the internet as an escape for themselves, that isn't supportive of his point at all. Well from this point on his ramblings just keep on spiraling down into utter ignorant retardedness. I'm not going to give my opinion on that "neanderthals" vs "homo sapiens" bullshit, that's too low for me. + Show Spoiler + Empathy separates, without it being really spelled out, the people as if you were confronted with two different species - Neanderthals and Homo sapiens have unified themselves to humankind and sadly one can not tell which species they belong to anymore. The problem hereby is less that it may take a while until one knows that a person belongs in the category galoot with cave fixation and latent hostility against everything that has not lived in a cave and is somehow "foreign". Instead i'm going to give a little lesson on empathy. In life, nothing is for free. Neither is empathy. The general rule is "If you do right by me, I'll do right by you. If you are good to me, I'll be good to you. Say you invite me to a party in your house and later it turns out I made a mess in your bath room, badmouthed your other guests, told lies about you to your girlfriends, been very spiteful in general. Would you invite me again? Friendships are investments, you devote time and energy to socialize with the other person, expecting to receive the same kind of commitment in return. If that is not the case you will most likely discontinue the friendship as it is not a beneficial relationship to you. It's give and take. If I want to be treated with empathy from the people that matter to me I'd be careful to not trash talk them, be polite and respectful in my dealings with them, treat them the way I'd like to be treated. This limits me in a way that I can't always express myself the way I'd actually want to, because I'm feeling emphatic towards my friends and don't want to hurt their feelings, so I express myself differently or more moderate than I normally would. In the end, my goal as a social human being would be to receive empathy from as many people as possible while making as little concessions as possible. In the end, there are no fucking Neanderthals anymore, but a single humankind we all belong to. In the end, we all live on the same planet and have to get along with each other. In the end, in a world full of people of different cultures, ethnicities, age, varying degrees of competence and many other societal factors, our primary goal as humankind should be to accept as many of those differences as humanly possible in order to achieve peaceful co-existence alongside each other, as opposed to discrimination, persecution, war, starvation and many other cruelties caused by those groups of people who would abuse those differences for selfish purposes. Atrocities such as committed in Norway this year only came to be because those groups have been very successful in segregating the population to the point that mentally ill fanatics would go on such killing sprees purely out of conviction. I could go on with this, but I honestly don't feel like it anymore. I myself am far from being a perfect person, I get defensive and aggressive really fast, tend to treat people unfairly when I'm angry, get frustrated easily, never had many friends but I know one thing; I love human beings. I love that there are smart people, not-so-smart people, people who look very differently from the way I and people in my country look, people who are funny, people who are serious, people who are just being themselves, people who are very talented, people who are not so talented but always try their best, people who are competitive, people who accept for what they are, the list goes on and on. Thanks for this thorough comment. I can't really comment on this, as I do indeed understand and am able to relate to your points but also am able to relate to the situation the blogger is describing. I think it's a good way to close this discussion with, though. | ||
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