On March 28 2012 18:25 NukeD wrote: Offending and insulting are two different things. One is wrong objectively, the other is wrong subjectively.
Some people believe morals are subjective. I do.
If you believe in universal moralism, I can see your point. I disagree however. I think it's all subjective. But the facts it's based on, can be objectively right or wrong.
If morality isn't universal, then does that mean that what Hitler did was ok, and that the nazi's should have gone free? If you think morality is relative, and I come up to you with a gun and say that anyone committing murder is just using their relative morality, and I shoot you to death, is that ok? If I come into your house and steal your things, and if I were to believe stealing was ok, would you just let me have your things? Are you sure that morality is subjective?
On March 28 2012 18:49 Railxp wrote: i think you've slightly misinterpreted what Stephen Fry meant.
he's attacking "I'm offended!" because it has been used in place of a honest argument.
"you should not be racist because i'm offended" is not really a valid point "you should not be racist because all men are equal" now that is more of convincing argument.
I think you've really hit the nail on the head here. One is logical, and the other is illogical. I don't believe for one second that Fry is stating that there isn't things to get offended over, but that people need to realize "I'm offended" isn't a reason, so much as it is an emotion related to something morally wrong.
On March 28 2012 18:25 NukeD wrote: Offending and insulting are two different things. One is wrong objectively, the other is wrong subjectively.
Some people believe morals are subjective. I do.
If you believe in universal moralism, I can see your point. I disagree however. I think it's all subjective. But the facts it's based on, can be objectively right or wrong.
If morality isn't universal, then does that mean that what Hitler did was ok, and that the nazi's should have gone free? If you think morality is relative, and I come up to you with a gun and say that anyone committing murder is just using their relative morality, and I shoot you to death, is that ok? If I come into your house and steal your things, and if I were to believe stealing was ok, would you just let me have your things? Are you sure that morality is subjective?
Your nazi exemple is proof that morality is subjective. Obviously they thought they were doing the right thing, that what they were doing was moral. Just because 50+years later everybody things they were nutjobs doesn't mean morality isn't subjective.
Your other points are useless imo, you're comparing morality with laws. You're saying that because someone things something is moral that is should trump laws and I fail to see why it should be so.
Just think of abortion, some people think it's moral others think it's not, but what's important if you do have an abortion is what the LAW says.
On March 28 2012 18:25 NukeD wrote: Offending and insulting are two different things. One is wrong objectively, the other is wrong subjectively.
Some people believe morals are subjective. I do.
If you believe in universal moralism, I can see your point. I disagree however. I think it's all subjective. But the facts it's based on, can be objectively right or wrong.
If morality isn't universal, then does that mean that what Hitler did was ok, and that the nazi's should have gone free? If you think morality is relative, and I come up to you with a gun and say that anyone committing murder is just using their relative morality, and I shoot you to death, is that ok? If I come into your house and steal your things, and if I were to believe stealing was ok, would you just let me have your things? Are you sure that morality is subjective?
Your nazi exemple is proof that morality is subjective. Obviously they thought they were doing the right thing, that what they were doing was moral. Just because 50+years later everybody things they were nutjobs doesn't mean morality isn't subjective.
Your other points are useless imo, you're comparing morality with laws. You're saying that because someone things something is moral that is should trump laws and I fail to see why it should be so.
Just think of abortion, some people think it's moral others think it's not, but what's important if you do have an abortion is what the LAW says.
The debate over abortion isn't what's moral, it's what matters more in morality. Women's rights vs. killing. You need to read up on the nuremberg trials and how the prosecution was able to state that there was a crime.
Your nazi exemple is proof that morality is subjective. Obviously they thought they were doing the right thing, that what they were doing was moral. Just because 50+years later everybody things they were nutjobs doesn't mean morality isn't subjective.
Your other points are useless imo, you're comparing morality with laws. You're saying that because someone things something is moral that is should trump laws and I fail to see why it should be so.
Just think of abortion, some people think it's moral others think it's not, but what's important if you do have an abortion is what the LAW says.
I would say that morality isn't subjective.
You can say that 1+1=2. This is a fact. You can say all bachelors are unmarried men. Utilitarianism is a theory that emphasizes overall happiness.
All those statements are true.
You can have truth values to moral statements because moral statements can be modulized with ethical theories such as utilitarianism or deontology. If you deny that, then you deny "1+1=2", and that "all bachelors are unmarried men" because I argue that both statements are objective just like "Utilitarianism is a theory that emphasizes overall happiness". The debate about abortion is really about what matters more in morality as Etrnity said.
Your nazi exemple is proof that morality is subjective. Obviously they thought they were doing the right thing, that what they were doing was moral. Just because 50+years later everybody things they were nutjobs doesn't mean morality isn't subjective.
Your other points are useless imo, you're comparing morality with laws. You're saying that because someone things something is moral that is should trump laws and I fail to see why it should be so.
Just think of abortion, some people think it's moral others think it's not, but what's important if you do have an abortion is what the LAW says.
I would say that morality isn't subjective.
You can say that 1+1=2. This is a fact. You can say all bachelors are unmarried men. Utilitarianism is a theory that emphasizes overall happiness.
All those statements are true.
You can have truth values to moral statements because moral statements can be modulized with ethical theories such as utilitarianism or deontology. If you deny that, then you deny "1+1=2", and that "all bachelors are unmarried men" because I argue that both statements are objective just like "Utilitarianism is a theory that emphasizes overall happiness". The debate about abortion is really about what matters more in morality as Etrnity said.
The three truths you stated were simply analytic statements. Normative claims aren't analytic.
An example of the conclusions I could derive from your logic:
I define a moral act to be one in which a male rapes a female. This is an objective fact because this is how I've defined moral acts. Therefore, males raping females is a moral action. Moral actions, by definition, ought to be performed. Males ought to rape females.
Analytic truths cannot lead to moral oughts as a result of this obvious flaw. Analytic truths are only true because of the way we've defined them.
my main issue with being offensive to others is that it openly advertises others to possibly congregate and cooperate together to find more ways to hurt people. this could just lead to a bunch of people having stupid gossipy racist meetings in their own homes or it could lead to something like randomly lynching a stranger in the middle of the night.
a single person being a dick is nothing to be bothered about, but it can easily get out of hand when they might have the chance to share their hatred with someone else and, dare i say, "brainstorm" a means of really getting their message through. a lot of people are satisfied with just badmouthing strangers on the internet, but others may not be convinced that they are being heard and will want to go out and really do something about it.
to take the michael richard's nigger-palooza incident into context, he was a sole person. he did not actually hurt anybody but himself. he ended up ruining his career and his image by openly trying to offend people. he got what was coming to him. but when people don't have to worry about risking their professional career through offending people, they can just go about doing what they want with no repercussions because its a free country. that's wrong, in my opinion, since as i mentioned before, people don't try and offend people publicly to put the people down, they are trying to rally others who think like them so that they can become a more potent threat.
On April 28 2012 03:36 megapants wrote: my main issue with being offensive to others is that it openly advertises others to possibly congregate and cooperate together to find more ways to hurt people. this could just lead to a bunch of people having stupid gossipy racist meetings in their own homes or it could lead to something like randomly lynching a stranger in the middle of the night.
a single person being a dick is nothing to be bothered about, but it can easily get out of hand when they might have the chance to share their hatred with someone else and, dare i say, "brainstorm" a means of really getting their message through. a lot of people are satisfied with just badmouthing strangers on the internet, but others may not be convinced that they are being heard and will want to go out and really do something about it.
to take the michael richard's nigger-palooza incident into context, he was a sole person. he did not actually hurt anybody but himself. he ended up ruining his career and his image by openly trying to offend people. he got what was coming to him. but when people don't have to worry about risking their professional career through offending people, they can just go about doing what they want with no repercussions because its a free country. that's wrong, in my opinion, since as i mentioned before, people don't try and offend people publicly to put the people down, they are trying to rally others who think like them so that they can become a more potent threat.
Just because some people can use freedom of speech to hurt others, does not mean freedom of speech is wrong, and I think you are pretty bold in your conclusion to why people publicly attempt to offend. A lot of people who might be racist, and might even openly be racist, would never go beyond that. Claiming that in every situation they are attempting to organize some movement against whatever they disagree with is absurd.
Let me give you a non-racist example, Lets say I have the opinion that baseball is a dumb sport, someone starts talking about baseball and is clearly an avid fan, I tell him "baseball is stupid." Naturally hes going to get offended, but does that mean that im trying to start some militant movement against baseball? Of course not, I was simply stating my opinion, and a lot of times people will state their opinion with the goal of getting a rise out of people and have absolutely no plans of going further than that. If everyone had this same mentality of "protecting" everyone about everything, the world would be a shit place. (Some people use cars irresponsibly, ban cars, some people use guns irresponsibly ban guns, ban drugs, ban alcohol, ban swimming because some people drown, ban this, ban that, the list goes on and on). Freedom has a price, and I think you'll find that as soon as you start sacrificing certain freedoms, others begin to get taken away as well.
On April 28 2012 03:36 megapants wrote: my main issue with being offensive to others is that it openly advertises others to possibly congregate and cooperate together to find more ways to hurt people. this could just lead to a bunch of people having stupid gossipy racist meetings in their own homes or it could lead to something like randomly lynching a stranger in the middle of the night.
a single person being a dick is nothing to be bothered about, but it can easily get out of hand when they might have the chance to share their hatred with someone else and, dare i say, "brainstorm" a means of really getting their message through. a lot of people are satisfied with just badmouthing strangers on the internet, but others may not be convinced that they are being heard and will want to go out and really do something about it.
to take the michael richard's nigger-palooza incident into context, he was a sole person. he did not actually hurt anybody but himself. he ended up ruining his career and his image by openly trying to offend people. he got what was coming to him. but when people don't have to worry about risking their professional career through offending people, they can just go about doing what they want with no repercussions because its a free country. that's wrong, in my opinion, since as i mentioned before, people don't try and offend people publicly to put the people down, they are trying to rally others who think like them so that they can become a more potent threat.
Just because some people can use freedom of speech to hurt others, does not mean freedom of speech is wrong, and I think you are pretty bold in your conclusion to why people publicly attempt to offend. A lot of people who might be racist, and might openly be racist, that doesn't mean they are attempting to organize some movement against whatever they disagree with.
Let me give you a non-racist example, Lets say I have the opinion that baseball is a dumb sport, someone starts talking about baseball and is clearly an avid fan, I tell him "baseball is stupid." Naturally hes going to get offended, but does that mean that im trying to start some militant movement against baseball? Of course not, I was simply stating my opinion, and a lot of times people will state their opinion with the goal of getting a rise out of people and have absolutely no plans of going further than that. If everyone had this same mentality of "protecting" everyone about everything, the world would be a shit place. (Some people use cars irresponsibly, ban cars, some people use guns irresponsibly ban guns, ban drugs, ban alcohol, ban swimming because some people drown, ban this, ban that, the list goes on and on). Freedom has a price, and I think you'll find that as soon as you start sacrificing certain freedoms, others begin to get taken away as well.
How often are people persecuted or beaten or murdered for playing baseball? If it were a common enough occurence, the very same words that "baseball is stupid" might convey a different meaning, and if you honestly believed that baseball was a stupid sport, but felt no ill will toward its practioners, and did not condone harming them, then it would be quite reasonable to expect you to properly qualify and measure your statements if you honestly don't want your speech to be taken as inflammatory and possibly even threatening.
On April 27 2012 23:48 Friedrich Nietzsche wrote: People just need to be less sensitive. There is a lot to be offended about in this world. You can't wage war on all of them.
That's too apathetic for me. Are you seriously saying that since there are too many atrocities in the world that we should just ignore some, and that we should just love our enemies?
On April 28 2012 03:36 megapants wrote: my main issue with being offensive to others is that it openly advertises others to possibly congregate and cooperate together to find more ways to hurt people. this could just lead to a bunch of people having stupid gossipy racist meetings in their own homes or it could lead to something like randomly lynching a stranger in the middle of the night.
a single person being a dick is nothing to be bothered about, but it can easily get out of hand when they might have the chance to share their hatred with someone else and, dare i say, "brainstorm" a means of really getting their message through. a lot of people are satisfied with just badmouthing strangers on the internet, but others may not be convinced that they are being heard and will want to go out and really do something about it.
to take the michael richard's nigger-palooza incident into context, he was a sole person. he did not actually hurt anybody but himself. he ended up ruining his career and his image by openly trying to offend people. he got what was coming to him. but when people don't have to worry about risking their professional career through offending people, they can just go about doing what they want with no repercussions because its a free country. that's wrong, in my opinion, since as i mentioned before, people don't try and offend people publicly to put the people down, they are trying to rally others who think like them so that they can become a more potent threat.
Just because some people can use freedom of speech to hurt others, does not mean freedom of speech is wrong, and I think you are pretty bold in your conclusion to why people publicly attempt to offend. A lot of people who might be racist, and might even openly be racist, would never go beyond that. Claiming that in every situation they are attempting to organize some movement against whatever they disagree with is absurd.
Let me give you a non-racist example, Lets say I have the opinion that baseball is a dumb sport, someone starts talking about baseball and is clearly an avid fan, I tell him "baseball is stupid." Naturally hes going to get offended, but does that mean that im trying to start some militant movement against baseball? Of course not, I was simply stating my opinion, and a lot of times people will state their opinion with the goal of getting a rise out of people and have absolutely no plans of going further than that. If everyone had this same mentality of "protecting" everyone about everything, the world would be a shit place. (Some people use cars irresponsibly, ban cars, some people use guns irresponsibly ban guns, ban drugs, ban alcohol, ban swimming because some people drown, ban this, ban that, the list goes on and on). Freedom has a price, and I think you'll find that as soon as you start sacrificing certain freedoms, others begin to get taken away as well.
sorry if i sounded sensationalist or something but that was not the message i was trying to send. i only used extreme examples as those are the most obvious outcomes. i was more talking against people being offensive rather than someone getting offended, which may have just been off point of the thread. if so, my bad.
i think the point of the thread is that whether someone tries to stop it or not, there will always be people who try and jerk a negative reaction out of someone else. there's no way to stop it, so why bother getting worked up over it? my point is that its a two way street. there will also always be people who have a legitimate reason for wanting to change people, so why get worked up over them? be offensive, but the cost is that you are risking getting chewed out by someone in the process. if you don't like that then don't be offensive or get over those people. they are free to do as they please just as much as anybody else.
you can't justify one side and smack talk the other when the argument is valid on both ends. its just in the case of people getting defensive about feminism, racism, nationalism, professionalism, what have you, there seems to be more people who back that side of the argument since it promotes the idea peacefulness, civility, equality, etc. whereas people who back up their need to be offensive are viewed as self-centered, arrogant, unsympathetic, etc.
On April 28 2012 03:36 megapants wrote: my main issue with being offensive to others is that it openly advertises others to possibly congregate and cooperate together to find more ways to hurt people. this could just lead to a bunch of people having stupid gossipy racist meetings in their own homes or it could lead to something like randomly lynching a stranger in the middle of the night.
a single person being a dick is nothing to be bothered about, but it can easily get out of hand when they might have the chance to share their hatred with someone else and, dare i say, "brainstorm" a means of really getting their message through. a lot of people are satisfied with just badmouthing strangers on the internet, but others may not be convinced that they are being heard and will want to go out and really do something about it.
to take the michael richard's nigger-palooza incident into context, he was a sole person. he did not actually hurt anybody but himself. he ended up ruining his career and his image by openly trying to offend people. he got what was coming to him. but when people don't have to worry about risking their professional career through offending people, they can just go about doing what they want with no repercussions because its a free country. that's wrong, in my opinion, since as i mentioned before, people don't try and offend people publicly to put the people down, they are trying to rally others who think like them so that they can become a more potent threat.
Just because some people can use freedom of speech to hurt others, does not mean freedom of speech is wrong, and I think you are pretty bold in your conclusion to why people publicly attempt to offend. A lot of people who might be racist, and might openly be racist, that doesn't mean they are attempting to organize some movement against whatever they disagree with.
Let me give you a non-racist example, Lets say I have the opinion that baseball is a dumb sport, someone starts talking about baseball and is clearly an avid fan, I tell him "baseball is stupid." Naturally hes going to get offended, but does that mean that im trying to start some militant movement against baseball? Of course not, I was simply stating my opinion, and a lot of times people will state their opinion with the goal of getting a rise out of people and have absolutely no plans of going further than that. If everyone had this same mentality of "protecting" everyone about everything, the world would be a shit place. (Some people use cars irresponsibly, ban cars, some people use guns irresponsibly ban guns, ban drugs, ban alcohol, ban swimming because some people drown, ban this, ban that, the list goes on and on). Freedom has a price, and I think you'll find that as soon as you start sacrificing certain freedoms, others begin to get taken away as well.
How often are people persecuted or beaten or murdered for playing baseball? If it were a common enough occurence, the very same words that "baseball is stupid" might convey a different meaning, and if you honestly believed that baseball was a stupid sport, but felt no ill will toward its practioners, and did not condone harming them, then it would be quite reasonable to expect you to properly qualify and measure your statements if you honestly don't want your speech to be taken as inflammatory and possibly even threatening.
Sure, racism is a bigger cause of violence than a lot of other things, but I just don't see how the government can effectively make a law that bans "racist gatherings," Direct racism isn't protected under the 1st, Indirect racism is highly frowned upon and leads to a multitude of social consequences, obviously any violence is illegal. I just don't see how the government can ban "social gatherings that might lead to violence against a specific group of individuals," because that would knock out a hell of a lot more than KKK gatherings and whatnot. I feel like these thoughts would lead to a slippery slope, what about religious gatherings? what about political party gatherings? what about nationalistic gatherings? Hell, this is teamliquid, what about specific game gatherings? I've seen plenty of violent, honest, legitimate HATE over people playing different games, even on this website. Sure, most of it would never amount to anything(exactly the same as racism) but, in some cases it leads to violence.(I've heard stories of fights breaking out amongst different game players at tournament events, for example) it really doesn't matter what the group of like-minded individuals is gathered for, there will ALWAYS be some violent ones.
I read this a while ago and I think it puts an end to this silly semantics stuff.
I actually don’t care whether anyone is offended. Offense is a vague, amorphous concept, and it is completely subjective, as my friend pointed out. Anyone can claim to be deeply, mortally offended by anything, and it may very well be true; even if it’s not, there’s no way to dispute it. “You don’t really feel what you claim you feel,” is a line of argumentation that doesn’t get anyone anywhere.
What I care about is harm. What I ultimately said in this other argument was:
The problem with sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic, classist, ableist, etc., remarks and “jokes” is not that they’re offensive, but that by relying for their meaning on harmful cultural narratives about privileged and marginalized groups they reinforce those narratives, and the stronger those narratives are, the stronger the implicit biases with which people are indoctrinated are. That’s real harm, not just “offense.”
(29:20 min, seems like the time link didn't work.)
“Either if I see a YouTube film or read a blog, my eyes go below to the bottom of the screen. Because I get so fantastically upset by people who write comments. I don’t even know anybody who writes comments! I think that’s the point. The kind of people who put comments are themselves so weird and unhappy and alone and strange, it’s called ‘trolling’, you know, vicious comments about things. I mean, really weird. Either politically weird or religiously weird or just so intolerant or so desperate to be heard! So offensive! Just pleading: “Please listen to meeee!” they’re saying all the time. “Listen to me!” And of course you don’t want to, and if you do it just gets upset, you might even be tricked into replying with an aggressive reply to some idiot, and with vile opinions about things. Which they will use on a complete… it might be a puppy running around, some random Youtube thing, and it somehow manages to get a thread of nastiness into it. And they just want to be heard, and they are so resentful, and so annoyed, especially due to other people’s blogs, the fact that somebody’s reading someone else’s blog and not theirs is madly enough!” — Stephen Fry
On March 27 2012 01:53 The_PhaCe wrote: I think my boi squeezy jibbs makes a really good point with this video. Iirc you can post videos in here right? So many rules to keep track of on this forum TT
Bottom line is, people need to stop being such cry babies
perfect portrayal of what my views are What is being offended in the first place? I just think everyone should get along
There are 2 worlds here, one that is online and the actual real world. You cannot get "offended" on the internet, because there will always be people looking to do just that. I am not even talking about trolls that roam Youtube and pretty much every forum out there (including TL). But there are websites that have been built around pissing people people and offending them to generate hits.
In the real world Stephen Fry must live in a rich, upper and/or middle class neighborhood, because his quote:
"i am offended" well so fucking what?"
Shows a lack of knowledge and showcases how he lives in a bubble. In most other countries, where the none rich people live, offending someone will get your ass beat, i am not talking about you getting into a argument, we are talking a fist fight here. That is how it is for majority of the world.
Thus it makes him, and everyone else look like a internet tough guy with this whole "i dont care who i offend maaaan'!!" when in reality, trust me: you do. You just live in a safety bubble where you can feel like a big man. No matter what you think you can do, or how badass you have convinced yourself you are, or how many imaginary UFC titles you have won, trust me, there are people out there waiting for you just to give them a glance.
Out there, in the concrete jungle, there are many people walking around hoping and wishing that you will even say anything that could be remotely taken as a diss on them, all this just so they can blow their fuse and use their fists/weapons on you.
But back to the internet part, i think everyone has figured it out, everyone is trying to be as offensive as possible on the internet and people have caught on and almost become immune to it by now.
It has taught people that hiding behind your own anonymity means that your words have literally no weight to them. As anyone is capable of saying whatever they want. Thus no reason to be offended.
The problem I have with that quote is the problem I have with the use of a lot of quotes in this direction: whatever good it may have is undone by the fact that it's often used by assholes to defend themselves or others being assholes.
In the United States, the government cannot infringe upon your right to say things (within reason). That does not extend to other people. If you say something offensive, you should not be surprised that people get offended. Free speech goes both ways; you can say whatever prickish things you want, but the rest of us don't have to put up with you and can ostracize you for it.
There is often this idea that being offended by someone's statement is somehow the "fault" of the person being offended. That they should "stop being such cry babies," or "chill out a bit," or whatever.
Why? If you have the right to say what you want, then so do I. Being offended by some asshole saying something dickish is just as much my right as it is your right to say something dickish.
On March 28 2012 18:49 Railxp wrote: i think you've slightly misinterpreted what Stephen Fry meant.
he's attacking "I'm offended!" because it has been used in place of a honest argument.
"you should not be racist because i'm offended" is not really a valid point "you should not be racist because all men are equal" now that is more of convincing argument.
Ironically, people are now using his statement in place of an honest argument defending people who say offensive things. It all comes full circle.
And quite frankly, I shouldn't have to explain why I'm offended by racism. I mean seriously, do we need to have a discussion about why <insert target X-ism> is bad and offensive? It's just a waste of words; the assholes don't believe "all people are equal" (because generally, if they did they wouldn't be assholes), so it's not a convencing argument to them. And the people who aren't assholes... will either be offended by it or understanding of why someone was offended by it.
In short: it's just adding pointless extra words that we all know and decided long ago about our feelings on them. I see no need to have to make a "convincing argument" to people who are unconvincable.
This is just one of those reddit pictures someone posted up, and then everyone who upvoted thought was a smart comment. There are obviously times when someone can say something offensive and you don't want them to be offensive so you tell them.
EPT
What is being offended in the first place? I just think everyone should get along
