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On April 09 2018 05:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2018 04:16 IgnE wrote:What is so damning about Peterson for me, is not that he tells stories about the pancake-dragon, it's his completely disingenuous use and abuse of figures like Nietzsche and Orwell. Reading that CurrentAffairs essay previously linked in this thread by kollin, I don't know how any intellectually honest person can read JP's use of Orwell's Wigan Pier and not be completely disillusioned with most of his pronouncements in areas outside of clinical psychology. The Wigar Pier quotation is totally damning in my view, and clearly reveals the unconscious ideological iceberg underneath all of his political opinions (JP's constant insistence that he is against all ideology should put everyone else on notice that he is, in fact, a deeply ideological man). If he can't even deal with Orwell in an intellectually honest manner, imagine how he thinks about all the "postmodern neo-marxists" he's always railing about. I didn't know if this was a philosophical/ psychological reference so I Google that term. That was a mistake. Thanks, Urban Dictionary. Besides his obsession with trying to make outdated and disproven Jungian analysis look credible, his insistence on taking mundane and unremarkable platitudes and making them sound as ridiculously wordy and confusing as possible (which equates to "brilliance" in the minds of his supporters), his victim blaming for sexual harassment in the workplace, his denial of any gender pay discrimination, and the fact that he says he identifies as a Christian yet doesn't believe in Jesus's resurrection story (which I think is a contradiction or at least an inconsistency, no?), didn't he also gain notoriety from refusing to follow university protocols on simply acknowledging gender equity (citing freedom of speech, as if his employers aren't allowed to try to enforce additional policies that are aimed towards fairness and acceptance of students)?
The pancake-dragon story is in the currentaffairs essay kollin linked and that I relinked. Robinson transcribed one of Peterson's lectures where he is talking about the dragon of chaos and ropes in a story about a young child eating pancakes.
I don't find Peterson to be "ridiculously wordy and confusing." I think that says more about the willingness of critics to appeal to the lowest common denominator than it does about any intended obscurantism on Peterson's part. "Look at this guy using big words, trying to be nuanced, and capitalizing words! What a pedant!"
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United States24569 Posts
Making some exceptions for federal agencies getting involved in severe or specialized situations, the police enforce the law using crime prevention techniques where legal and when practicable. If you break the law, the police either ticket you (minor) or arrest you (major) until such time as other competent authorities and/or your peers decide what penalties will result from your actions. When crime is suspected, police usually have lead for investigating if and how a crime was committed. If I am the victim of a crime, I report that crime to the police so that the crime can be investigated. Preferably, whoever is responsible will be identified and penalized appropriately. If possible, I will be compensated for the damages associated with the crime I was involved in.
I don't see the problem being the mission of the police so much as how they try to accomplish it. From the perspective of a privileged person, the police do a much better job compared to the perspective of many underprivileged people.
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On April 09 2018 05:12 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2018 05:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On April 09 2018 04:16 IgnE wrote:What is so damning about Peterson for me, is not that he tells stories about the pancake-dragon, it's his completely disingenuous use and abuse of figures like Nietzsche and Orwell. Reading that CurrentAffairs essay previously linked in this thread by kollin, I don't know how any intellectually honest person can read JP's use of Orwell's Wigan Pier and not be completely disillusioned with most of his pronouncements in areas outside of clinical psychology. The Wigar Pier quotation is totally damning in my view, and clearly reveals the unconscious ideological iceberg underneath all of his political opinions (JP's constant insistence that he is against all ideology should put everyone else on notice that he is, in fact, a deeply ideological man). If he can't even deal with Orwell in an intellectually honest manner, imagine how he thinks about all the "postmodern neo-marxists" he's always railing about. I didn't know if this was a philosophical/ psychological reference so I Google that term. That was a mistake. Thanks, Urban Dictionary. Besides his obsession with trying to make outdated and disproven Jungian analysis look credible, his insistence on taking mundane and unremarkable platitudes and making them sound as ridiculously wordy and confusing as possible (which equates to "brilliance" in the minds of his supporters), his victim blaming for sexual harassment in the workplace, his denial of any gender pay discrimination, and the fact that he says he identifies as a Christian yet doesn't believe in Jesus's resurrection story (which I think is a contradiction or at least an inconsistency, no?), didn't he also gain notoriety from refusing to follow university protocols on simply acknowledging gender equity (citing freedom of speech, as if his employers aren't allowed to try to enforce additional policies that are aimed towards fairness and acceptance of students)? The pancake-dragon story is in the currentaffairs essay kollin linked and that I relinked. Robinson transcribed one of Peterson's lectures where he is talking about the dragon of chaos and ropes in a story about a young child eating pancakes. I don't find Peterson to be "ridiculously wordy and confusing." I think that says more about the willingness of critics to appeal to the lowest common denominator than it does about any intended obscurantism on Peterson's part. "Look at this guy using big words, trying to be nuanced, and capitalizing words! What a pedant!"
Ah gotcha; I see.
I find that his long-winded explanations (as exemplified in that very article) end up becoming so general or ambiguous that the reader/ listener can easily fall victim to the Barnum/ fortune cookie effect and interpreting it positively in whatever way they wish, and it becomes very hard to pin down what his actual arguments are. I find him to be the opposite of the old Shakespearean mantra "brevity is the soul of wit".
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On April 09 2018 05:12 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2018 05:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On April 09 2018 04:16 IgnE wrote:What is so damning about Peterson for me, is not that he tells stories about the pancake-dragon, it's his completely disingenuous use and abuse of figures like Nietzsche and Orwell. Reading that CurrentAffairs essay previously linked in this thread by kollin, I don't know how any intellectually honest person can read JP's use of Orwell's Wigan Pier and not be completely disillusioned with most of his pronouncements in areas outside of clinical psychology. The Wigar Pier quotation is totally damning in my view, and clearly reveals the unconscious ideological iceberg underneath all of his political opinions (JP's constant insistence that he is against all ideology should put everyone else on notice that he is, in fact, a deeply ideological man). If he can't even deal with Orwell in an intellectually honest manner, imagine how he thinks about all the "postmodern neo-marxists" he's always railing about. I didn't know if this was a philosophical/ psychological reference so I Google that term. That was a mistake. Thanks, Urban Dictionary. Besides his obsession with trying to make outdated and disproven Jungian analysis look credible, his insistence on taking mundane and unremarkable platitudes and making them sound as ridiculously wordy and confusing as possible (which equates to "brilliance" in the minds of his supporters), his victim blaming for sexual harassment in the workplace, his denial of any gender pay discrimination, and the fact that he says he identifies as a Christian yet doesn't believe in Jesus's resurrection story (which I think is a contradiction or at least an inconsistency, no?), didn't he also gain notoriety from refusing to follow university protocols on simply acknowledging gender equity (citing freedom of speech, as if his employers aren't allowed to try to enforce additional policies that are aimed towards fairness and acceptance of students)? The pancake-dragon story is in the currentaffairs essay kollin linked and that I relinked. Robinson transcribed one of Peterson's lectures where he is talking about the dragon of chaos and ropes in a story about a young child eating pancakes. I don't find Peterson to be "ridiculously wordy and confusing." I think that says more about the willingness of critics to appeal to the lowest common denominator than it does about any intended obscurantism on Peterson's part. "Look at this guy using big words, trying to be nuanced, and capitalizing words! What a pedant!"
That linked article from current affairs seemed to me to make a pretty good case for peterson being needlessly wordy and confusing. what do you make of the part of the article wherein they claimed such (if you read the full article and remember your thoughts on that part)?
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On April 09 2018 05:17 micronesia wrote:
Making some exceptions for federal agencies getting involved in severe or specialized situations, the police enforce the law using crime prevention techniques where legal and when practicable. If you break the law, the police either ticket you (minor) or arrest you (major) until such time as other competent authorities and/or your peers decide what penalties will result from your actions. When crime is suspected, police usually have lead for investigating if and how a crime was committed. If I am the victim of a crime, I report that crime to the police so that the crime can be investigated. Preferably, whoever is responsible will be identified and penalized appropriately. If possible, I will be compensated for the damages associated with the crime I was involved in.
I don't see the problem being the mission of the police so much as how they try to accomplish it. From the perspective of a privileged person, the police do a much better job compared to the perspective of many underprivileged people.
Not sure if you're implying that's their mission, or what they do. If you're saying it's their mission (not what they do) then I must ask how do you measure their success in that mission?
I think I disagree with most of those sentences so I'm going to break them up.
the police enforce the law using crime prevention techniques where legal and when practicable
Do they? I seem to remember billions spent every year settling up for wrongful acts.
If you break the law, the police either ticket you (minor) or arrest you (major) until such time as other competent authorities and/or your peers decide what penalties will result from your actions.
Do they? Do the police address every broken law or do they pick and choose which and when?
When crime is suspected, police usually have lead for investigating if and how a crime was committed. If I am the victim of a crime, I report that crime to the police so that the crime can be investigated.
How frequently do you believe this is the case? That a crime is committed/reported then investigated, then someone is convicted of the crime? Compared to how many crimes are committed. What information are you developing this understanding with?
I do have a problem with that mission regardless, as it employs an outdated understanding of human behavior using a punishment model that is evidenced in the US by our leading the world in incarceration and not a healthy structure for society. Though that doesn't lay strictly in the hands of the police. Granted I'm focusing on the summary executions and other violent acts committed by police at the moment.
EDIT: Granting for the sake of argument that mission is righteous and one they pursue, how do we measure their effectiveness at it?
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On April 09 2018 05:12 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2018 05:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On April 09 2018 04:16 IgnE wrote:What is so damning about Peterson for me, is not that he tells stories about the pancake-dragon, it's his completely disingenuous use and abuse of figures like Nietzsche and Orwell. Reading that CurrentAffairs essay previously linked in this thread by kollin, I don't know how any intellectually honest person can read JP's use of Orwell's Wigan Pier and not be completely disillusioned with most of his pronouncements in areas outside of clinical psychology. The Wigar Pier quotation is totally damning in my view, and clearly reveals the unconscious ideological iceberg underneath all of his political opinions (JP's constant insistence that he is against all ideology should put everyone else on notice that he is, in fact, a deeply ideological man). If he can't even deal with Orwell in an intellectually honest manner, imagine how he thinks about all the "postmodern neo-marxists" he's always railing about. I didn't know if this was a philosophical/ psychological reference so I Google that term. That was a mistake. Thanks, Urban Dictionary. Besides his obsession with trying to make outdated and disproven Jungian analysis look credible, his insistence on taking mundane and unremarkable platitudes and making them sound as ridiculously wordy and confusing as possible (which equates to "brilliance" in the minds of his supporters), his victim blaming for sexual harassment in the workplace, his denial of any gender pay discrimination, and the fact that he says he identifies as a Christian yet doesn't believe in Jesus's resurrection story (which I think is a contradiction or at least an inconsistency, no?), didn't he also gain notoriety from refusing to follow university protocols on simply acknowledging gender equity (citing freedom of speech, as if his employers aren't allowed to try to enforce additional policies that are aimed towards fairness and acceptance of students)? The pancake-dragon story is in the currentaffairs essay kollin linked and that I relinked. Robinson transcribed one of Peterson's lectures where he is talking about the dragon of chaos and ropes in a story about a young child eating pancakes. I don't find Peterson to be "ridiculously wordy and confusing." I think that says more about the willingness of critics to appeal to the lowest common denominator than it does about any intended obscurantism on Peterson's part. "Look at this guy using big words, trying to be nuanced, and capitalizing words! What a pedant!"
The smartest people in my opinion are those who can clearly communicate complex and nuanced thoughts with the least amount complex language. Using large amounts of jargon to make your thoughts needlessly hard to understand only sounds smart to people who are not used to intelligent conversation. Just because smart people sometimes use complex language does not mean that people who use complex language are necessarily smart.
If your thoughts are really that profound, you should try to communicate them as clearly as possible. Sometimes jargon is necessary. But needless jargon is the sign of someone who is more interested in appearing smart than in actually communicating thoughts.
Sure, i can use the friction of electrons accelerated in a steep potential difference to raise the inner energy of a 1.5*10^4 cubic millimeters of dihydrogenmonoxide to a critical point within its phase diagram.
Or i can cook 1.5l of water on my electric stove.
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United States24569 Posts
@ GreenHorizons
The police are not supposed to break the law or violate human rights when preventing crime. I was referring to what the police are supposed to do, and what they often actually do. I wasn't claiming they are 100% effective at not breaking the law or not failing to do their job.
You are setting up a false dichotomy regarding addressing every broken law. The alternative to addressing every broken law is not necessarily picking and choosing. Picking and choosing could be a criticism, but there are other reasons why not every crime ever committed is identified by the police and appropriately responded to.
Frankly, it seems like your concerns until that last paragraph are not about the mission of the police... you just consider them ineffective and corrupt. That's really not the same thing as discussing what their mission is. Regarding the very concept of policing, what is the method, in lieu of modern law and police, that you think is better and should be transitioned to?
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On April 09 2018 05:34 micronesia wrote:
@ GreenHorizons
The police are not supposed to break the law or violate human rights when preventing crime. I was referring to what the police are supposed to do, and what they often actually do. I wasn't claiming they are 100% effective at not breaking the law or not failing to do their job.
You are setting up a false dichotomy regarding addressing every broken law. The alternative to addressing every broken law is not necessarily picking and choosing. Picking and choosing could be a criticism, but there are other reasons why not every crime ever committed is identified by the police and appropriately responded to.
Frankly, it seems like your concerns until that last paragraph are not about the mission of the police... you just consider them ineffective and corrupt. That's really not the same thing as discussing what their mission is. Regarding the very concept of policing, what is the method, in lieu of modern law and police, that you think is better and should be transitioned to?
I think your misunderstanding a bit, but I do find them ineffective and corrupt and I think there's an ever growing pile of evidence of such.
Suspecting something like this might happen, I asked how you measure their effectiveness at the mission?
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United States24569 Posts
So I take it in order to be shown some type of an explanation of how we can replace our current police system without creating a lot of new/extra victims, I need to first perform a thorough analysis of how to measure the effectiveness of the U.S. police? I mean, you can write entire books on that for any profession, and police is a particularly challenging one. I don't think that's really a fair barrier for entry to get some type of clarification about what you are actually calling for when you say abolish the police. I acknowledge I may have missed some referenced positions from weeks/months ago.
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On April 09 2018 05:02 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2018 04:53 GreenHorizons wrote:Police have killed another person as a result of piss poor training. Here we see a dozen or so cops executing a mentally ill man with a knife in a homeless shelter. The two parties/police are not going to fix this situation unless people threaten their careers. We should be working to abolish the police, not superficially reform them (to little or no success). Shitty story describing the event Let's not go through this again, please. Yes, the cops in the US is shit(ly trained). No, no amount of "Abolish with nothing to put in their place" is a good idea. Reform would work, because it has proven to work in literally the entire rest of the first world. Please let's not have 30 more pages of this shit.
It's not obvious to me that abolishing the police and not putting anything in their place would be worse than the status quo, at least in certain communities. In many places police spend very little time solving "serious" crimes like rape and murder, and instead spend their time extracting as much wealth from the community as possible by charging people with high numbers of minor offenses.
And then you have places like Baltimore which take it to a whole other level:
Data presented to the Baltimore City Council this week showed that police keep about 94 percent of the cash they seize from residents, even though conviction rates are much lower.
From 2013 until 2017, Baltimore police seized more than $10.3 million, but only returned about $643,000.
Source
BALTIMORE — The officers’ job during some of the bloodiest years in Baltimore was to get guns off the streets.
Instead, they plundered money, jewelry, drugs and weapons and gouged the cash-strapped city for overtime and hours they never worked, according to their own admissions and testimony in ongoing criminal cases.
Over the past four years, some members of the Gun Trace Task Force stole more than $300,000, at least three kilos of cocaine, 43 pounds of marijuana, 800 grams of heroin and hundreds of thousands of dollars in watches from suspected drug dealers and civilians, according to officers’ plea agreements and statements in federal court.
They admit to putting illegal trackers on the cars of suspected dealers so they could rob their homes and sell off any drugs and guns they found. The squad sergeant, Wayne Jenkins, carried brass knuckles, a machete and a grappling hook — all shown to jurors — in case they found a “monster” dealer to swindle, two officers testified in Baltimore over the past week. Those officers testified that Jenkins also told them to carry BB guns to plant at crime scenes in case they needed to justify why they had hurt someone.
Source
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On April 09 2018 05:46 Mercy13 wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2018 05:02 Excludos wrote:On April 09 2018 04:53 GreenHorizons wrote:Police have killed another person as a result of piss poor training. https://twitter.com/Pdx_resistance/status/982863406502834176Here we see a dozen or so cops executing a mentally ill man with a knife in a homeless shelter. The two parties/police are not going to fix this situation unless people threaten their careers. We should be working to abolish the police, not superficially reform them (to little or no success). Shitty story describing the event Let's not go through this again, please. Yes, the cops in the US is shit(ly trained). No, no amount of "Abolish with nothing to put in their place" is a good idea. Reform would work, because it has proven to work in literally the entire rest of the first world. Please let's not have 30 more pages of this shit. It's not obvious to me that abolishing the police and not putting anything in their place would be worse than the status quo, at least in certain communities. In many places police spend very little time solving "serious" crimes like rape and murder, and instead spend their time extracting as much wealth from the community as possible by charging people with high numbers of minor offenses. And then you have places like Baltimore which take it to a whole other level: Show nested quote +Data presented to the Baltimore City Council this week showed that police keep about 94 percent of the cash they seize from residents, even though conviction rates are much lower.
From 2013 until 2017, Baltimore police seized more than $10.3 million, but only returned about $643,000. SourceShow nested quote +BALTIMORE — The officers’ job during some of the bloodiest years in Baltimore was to get guns off the streets.
Instead, they plundered money, jewelry, drugs and weapons and gouged the cash-strapped city for overtime and hours they never worked, according to their own admissions and testimony in ongoing criminal cases.
Over the past four years, some members of the Gun Trace Task Force stole more than $300,000, at least three kilos of cocaine, 43 pounds of marijuana, 800 grams of heroin and hundreds of thousands of dollars in watches from suspected drug dealers and civilians, according to officers’ plea agreements and statements in federal court.
They admit to putting illegal trackers on the cars of suspected dealers so they could rob their homes and sell off any drugs and guns they found. The squad sergeant, Wayne Jenkins, carried brass knuckles, a machete and a grappling hook — all shown to jurors — in case they found a “monster” dealer to swindle, two officers testified in Baltimore over the past week. Those officers testified that Jenkins also told them to carry BB guns to plant at crime scenes in case they needed to justify why they had hurt someone. Source
I wonder, though, if the existence and employment of a police force acts as a deterrent from worse lawlessness and anarchy, even if they don't do a lot of active and positive law enforcement in certain areas?
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On April 09 2018 05:42 micronesia wrote:
So I take it in order to be shown some type of an explanation of how we can replace our current police system without creating a lot of new/extra victims, I need to first perform a thorough analysis of how to measure the effectiveness of the U.S. police? I mean, you can write entire books on that for any profession, and police is a particularly challenging one. I don't think that's really a fair barrier for entry to get some type of clarification about what you are actually calling for when you say abolish the police. I acknowledge I may have missed some referenced positions from weeks/months ago.
You don't know how they are doing but seem confident that nothing would be worse than something, sounds intuitive, but how would you know?
Granting you for the moment that you need not be able to measure the effectiveness of police to assert it, and that I won't provide you an exhaustive replacement for the entirety of our system that you admittedly can't assess, let's first address what the police actually do.
The police spend very little of their time dealing with violent criminals—indeed, police sociologists report that only about 10% of the average police officer’s time is devoted to criminal matters of any kind. Most of the remaining 90% is spent dealing with infractions of various administrative codes and regulations: all those rules about how and where one can eat, drink, smoke, sell, sit, walk, and drive. If two people punch each other, or even draw a knife on each other, police are unlikely to get involved. Drive down the street in a car without license plates, on the other hand, and the authorities will show up instantly, threatening all sorts of dire consequences if you don’t do exactly what they tell you.
The police, then, are essentially just bureaucrats with weapons. Their main role in society is to bring the threat of physical force—even, death—into situations where it would never have been otherwise invoked, such as the enforcement of civic ordinances about the sale of untaxed cigarettes.
So one thing is that whatever violence interdiction team we develop, would be strictly separated from whatever administrative 'justice' team is needed to address the still necessary codes/regulations after a deep examination and dropping of a great deal of them.
www.thenation.com
That's an example of what I'm talking about with abolishing the police, does that make sense now?
On April 09 2018 05:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2018 05:46 Mercy13 wrote:On April 09 2018 05:02 Excludos wrote:On April 09 2018 04:53 GreenHorizons wrote:Police have killed another person as a result of piss poor training. https://twitter.com/Pdx_resistance/status/982863406502834176Here we see a dozen or so cops executing a mentally ill man with a knife in a homeless shelter. The two parties/police are not going to fix this situation unless people threaten their careers. We should be working to abolish the police, not superficially reform them (to little or no success). Shitty story describing the event Let's not go through this again, please. Yes, the cops in the US is shit(ly trained). No, no amount of "Abolish with nothing to put in their place" is a good idea. Reform would work, because it has proven to work in literally the entire rest of the first world. Please let's not have 30 more pages of this shit. It's not obvious to me that abolishing the police and not putting anything in their place would be worse than the status quo, at least in certain communities. In many places police spend very little time solving "serious" crimes like rape and murder, and instead spend their time extracting as much wealth from the community as possible by charging people with high numbers of minor offenses. And then you have places like Baltimore which take it to a whole other level: Data presented to the Baltimore City Council this week showed that police keep about 94 percent of the cash they seize from residents, even though conviction rates are much lower.
From 2013 until 2017, Baltimore police seized more than $10.3 million, but only returned about $643,000. SourceBALTIMORE — The officers’ job during some of the bloodiest years in Baltimore was to get guns off the streets.
Instead, they plundered money, jewelry, drugs and weapons and gouged the cash-strapped city for overtime and hours they never worked, according to their own admissions and testimony in ongoing criminal cases.
Over the past four years, some members of the Gun Trace Task Force stole more than $300,000, at least three kilos of cocaine, 43 pounds of marijuana, 800 grams of heroin and hundreds of thousands of dollars in watches from suspected drug dealers and civilians, according to officers’ plea agreements and statements in federal court.
They admit to putting illegal trackers on the cars of suspected dealers so they could rob their homes and sell off any drugs and guns they found. The squad sergeant, Wayne Jenkins, carried brass knuckles, a machete and a grappling hook — all shown to jurors — in case they found a “monster” dealer to swindle, two officers testified in Baltimore over the past week. Those officers testified that Jenkins also told them to carry BB guns to plant at crime scenes in case they needed to justify why they had hurt someone. Source I wonder, though, if the existence and employment of a police force acts as a deterrent from worse lawlessness and anarchy, even if they don't do a lot of active and positive law enforcement in certain areas?
It's basically impossible to get reliable data since the police are not willing contributors
The research is mixed but the general consensus is that it might lead to negligible reduction but the expense is immeasurable.
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On April 09 2018 05:52 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2018 05:46 Mercy13 wrote:On April 09 2018 05:02 Excludos wrote:On April 09 2018 04:53 GreenHorizons wrote:Police have killed another person as a result of piss poor training. https://twitter.com/Pdx_resistance/status/982863406502834176Here we see a dozen or so cops executing a mentally ill man with a knife in a homeless shelter. The two parties/police are not going to fix this situation unless people threaten their careers. We should be working to abolish the police, not superficially reform them (to little or no success). Shitty story describing the event Let's not go through this again, please. Yes, the cops in the US is shit(ly trained). No, no amount of "Abolish with nothing to put in their place" is a good idea. Reform would work, because it has proven to work in literally the entire rest of the first world. Please let's not have 30 more pages of this shit. It's not obvious to me that abolishing the police and not putting anything in their place would be worse than the status quo, at least in certain communities. In many places police spend very little time solving "serious" crimes like rape and murder, and instead spend their time extracting as much wealth from the community as possible by charging people with high numbers of minor offenses. And then you have places like Baltimore which take it to a whole other level: Data presented to the Baltimore City Council this week showed that police keep about 94 percent of the cash they seize from residents, even though conviction rates are much lower.
From 2013 until 2017, Baltimore police seized more than $10.3 million, but only returned about $643,000. SourceBALTIMORE — The officers’ job during some of the bloodiest years in Baltimore was to get guns off the streets.
Instead, they plundered money, jewelry, drugs and weapons and gouged the cash-strapped city for overtime and hours they never worked, according to their own admissions and testimony in ongoing criminal cases.
Over the past four years, some members of the Gun Trace Task Force stole more than $300,000, at least three kilos of cocaine, 43 pounds of marijuana, 800 grams of heroin and hundreds of thousands of dollars in watches from suspected drug dealers and civilians, according to officers’ plea agreements and statements in federal court.
They admit to putting illegal trackers on the cars of suspected dealers so they could rob their homes and sell off any drugs and guns they found. The squad sergeant, Wayne Jenkins, carried brass knuckles, a machete and a grappling hook — all shown to jurors — in case they found a “monster” dealer to swindle, two officers testified in Baltimore over the past week. Those officers testified that Jenkins also told them to carry BB guns to plant at crime scenes in case they needed to justify why they had hurt someone. Source I wonder, though, if the existence and employment of a police force acts as a deterrent from worse lawlessness and anarchy, even if they don't do a lot of active and positive law enforcement in certain areas?
That's a case that can be made. I think GH's point is just that people shouldn't take it for granted that getting rid of police forces would cause more harm than good.
Edit: A big part of the problem is that most police forces refuse to track clearance rates and other data that would make evaluating their performance possible, so it's tough to make a case for their efficacy which is more than theoretical.
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United States24569 Posts
Mychal Denzel Smith seems to want to create a society where police aren't needed. The violence that he argues police often fail to respond to could be greatly reduced if we created a better society with universal healthcare, educational opportunities for all, etc. That is a separate matter from whether or not the police add value in our current society. He admits, "My honest answer is that I don’t know what a world without police looks like." It seems premature to call for abolishing the police if the replacement is something we should do with or without the police being abolished, and we don't really know what the expected outcomes are of abolishing the police.
Of course the question is, what is causing so many high profile unnecessary deaths. Is there some cause that can be addressed directly, or is the problem inherent to the police? If the latter, then I think that's where the attention needs to be, but people who don't live in neighborhoods like Mr. Smith's need to be convinced that this is a problem inherent to the police and not one that can be fixed directly.
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On April 09 2018 06:21 micronesia wrote:
Mychal Denzel Smith seems to want to create a society where police aren't needed. The violence that he argues police often fail to respond to could be greatly reduced if we created a better society with universal healthcare, educational opportunities for all, etc. That is a separate matter from whether or not the police add value in our current society. He admits, "My honest answer is that I don’t know what a world without police looks like." It seems premature to call for abolishing the police if the replacement is something we should do with or without the police being abolished, and we don't really know what the expected outcomes are of abolishing the police.
Of course the question is, what is causing so many high profile unnecessary deaths. Is there some cause that can be addressed directly, or is the problem inherent to the police? If the latter, then I think that's where the attention needs to be, but people who don't live in neighborhoods like Mr. Smith's need to be convinced that this is a problem inherent to the police and not one that can be fixed directly.
K so I was citing the quote, not presenting his argument, sorry if that was unclear. That's why I provided you not with the larger economic, social, and political aspect he argues in that piece, but the selected quote and an idea about what that replacement looks like.
But he does make a relevant point among it.
When I say, “abolish the police,” I’m usually asked what I would have us replace them with. My answer is always full social, economic, and political equality, but that’s not what’s actually being asked. What people mean is “who is going to protect us?” Who protects us now? If you’re white and well-off, perhaps the police protect you. The rest of us, not so much. What use do I have for an institution that routinely kills people who look like me, and make it so I’m afraid to walk out of my home?
I don't think he really cares that people in those neighborhoods need to be convinced of his humanity, or rather he thinks that that's a moral and ethical failing on their part that must be remedied, but they must first admit they have a problem. Not suggest he is too inarticulate in his presentation of his humanity and righteous dignity.
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On April 09 2018 05:23 zlefin wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2018 05:12 IgnE wrote:On April 09 2018 05:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On April 09 2018 04:16 IgnE wrote:What is so damning about Peterson for me, is not that he tells stories about the pancake-dragon, it's his completely disingenuous use and abuse of figures like Nietzsche and Orwell. Reading that CurrentAffairs essay previously linked in this thread by kollin, I don't know how any intellectually honest person can read JP's use of Orwell's Wigan Pier and not be completely disillusioned with most of his pronouncements in areas outside of clinical psychology. The Wigar Pier quotation is totally damning in my view, and clearly reveals the unconscious ideological iceberg underneath all of his political opinions (JP's constant insistence that he is against all ideology should put everyone else on notice that he is, in fact, a deeply ideological man). If he can't even deal with Orwell in an intellectually honest manner, imagine how he thinks about all the "postmodern neo-marxists" he's always railing about. I didn't know if this was a philosophical/ psychological reference so I Google that term. That was a mistake. Thanks, Urban Dictionary. Besides his obsession with trying to make outdated and disproven Jungian analysis look credible, his insistence on taking mundane and unremarkable platitudes and making them sound as ridiculously wordy and confusing as possible (which equates to "brilliance" in the minds of his supporters), his victim blaming for sexual harassment in the workplace, his denial of any gender pay discrimination, and the fact that he says he identifies as a Christian yet doesn't believe in Jesus's resurrection story (which I think is a contradiction or at least an inconsistency, no?), didn't he also gain notoriety from refusing to follow university protocols on simply acknowledging gender equity (citing freedom of speech, as if his employers aren't allowed to try to enforce additional policies that are aimed towards fairness and acceptance of students)? The pancake-dragon story is in the currentaffairs essay kollin linked and that I relinked. Robinson transcribed one of Peterson's lectures where he is talking about the dragon of chaos and ropes in a story about a young child eating pancakes. I don't find Peterson to be "ridiculously wordy and confusing." I think that says more about the willingness of critics to appeal to the lowest common denominator than it does about any intended obscurantism on Peterson's part. "Look at this guy using big words, trying to be nuanced, and capitalizing words! What a pedant!" That linked article from current affairs seemed to me to make a pretty good case for peterson being needlessly wordy and confusing. what do you make of the part of the article wherein they claimed such (if you read the full article and remember your thoughts on that part)?
I think it's a mostly cheap tactic by a critic who wants to criticize both Peterson's supposed wordiness and his very plain-spoken teaching style. I don't think a "good case" is made that someone is "needlessly wordy" by simply pulling out a detailed paragraph in a 600 page book that is supposed to comprehensively address some topic. Robinson effectively points to it, and says, "there's nothing there, and it's confusing to boot!" I didn't find that paragraph particularly confusing, did you? And I certainly don't understand criticism that on the one hand the man is too wordy and confusing, and on the other hand he's just a demagogic self-help guru speaking in simple sentences that are infinitely interpretable. I much prefer it when someone lays everything out somewhere, like Peterson seems to do in his writings, because it's much easier to point out where he smuggles in baseless assumptions, compared to the relatively "straight-forward" or "common-sense" approaches he takes when speaking, that offer much greater hermeneutical latitude.
There's a certain fetish for "clear writing" that relies upon a strong belief in the possibility of unambiguous communication of meaning in the Anglosphere, and it annoys me when people who should know better cynically deploy it as part of a short-sighted rhetorical philistinism.
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IgnE, I haven't read the paragraph in question but 95% of the time I'm pretty sure I have no idea what your writing means. Is it possible that your standard for opaque and obfuscated writing is just a lot higher than most?
For the record, I'm not saying your writing is deliberately obfuscated. I've always just assumed I lacked the knowledge and intelligence to grasp what you were saying.
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On April 09 2018 05:30 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2018 05:12 IgnE wrote:On April 09 2018 05:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On April 09 2018 04:16 IgnE wrote:What is so damning about Peterson for me, is not that he tells stories about the pancake-dragon, it's his completely disingenuous use and abuse of figures like Nietzsche and Orwell. Reading that CurrentAffairs essay previously linked in this thread by kollin, I don't know how any intellectually honest person can read JP's use of Orwell's Wigan Pier and not be completely disillusioned with most of his pronouncements in areas outside of clinical psychology. The Wigar Pier quotation is totally damning in my view, and clearly reveals the unconscious ideological iceberg underneath all of his political opinions (JP's constant insistence that he is against all ideology should put everyone else on notice that he is, in fact, a deeply ideological man). If he can't even deal with Orwell in an intellectually honest manner, imagine how he thinks about all the "postmodern neo-marxists" he's always railing about. I didn't know if this was a philosophical/ psychological reference so I Google that term. That was a mistake. Thanks, Urban Dictionary. Besides his obsession with trying to make outdated and disproven Jungian analysis look credible, his insistence on taking mundane and unremarkable platitudes and making them sound as ridiculously wordy and confusing as possible (which equates to "brilliance" in the minds of his supporters), his victim blaming for sexual harassment in the workplace, his denial of any gender pay discrimination, and the fact that he says he identifies as a Christian yet doesn't believe in Jesus's resurrection story (which I think is a contradiction or at least an inconsistency, no?), didn't he also gain notoriety from refusing to follow university protocols on simply acknowledging gender equity (citing freedom of speech, as if his employers aren't allowed to try to enforce additional policies that are aimed towards fairness and acceptance of students)? The pancake-dragon story is in the currentaffairs essay kollin linked and that I relinked. Robinson transcribed one of Peterson's lectures where he is talking about the dragon of chaos and ropes in a story about a young child eating pancakes. I don't find Peterson to be "ridiculously wordy and confusing." I think that says more about the willingness of critics to appeal to the lowest common denominator than it does about any intended obscurantism on Peterson's part. "Look at this guy using big words, trying to be nuanced, and capitalizing words! What a pedant!" The smartest people in my opinion are those who can clearly communicate complex and nuanced thoughts with the least amount complex language. Using large amounts of jargon to make your thoughts needlessly hard to understand only sounds smart to people who are not used to intelligent conversation. Just because smart people sometimes use complex language does not mean that people who use complex language are necessarily smart. If your thoughts are really that profound, you should try to communicate them as clearly as possible. Sometimes jargon is necessary. But needless jargon is the sign of someone who is more interested in appearing smart than in actually communicating thoughts. Sure, i can use the friction of electrons accelerated in a steep potential difference to raise the inner energy of a 1.5*10^4 cubic millimeters of dihydrogenmonoxide to a critical point within its phase diagram. Or i can cook 1.5l of water on my electric stove.
I don't think Peterson is using "large amounts of jargon" to intentionally make his thoughts "needlessly hard to understand." Peterson is not a great writer. That much is clear. But he's not an obscurantist either.
As for this "the smartest people in my opinion are those who can clearly communicate complex and nuanced thoughts with the least amount [of] complex language," I am with Judith Butler on this. There are surely obscurantists who are deliberately incoherent in an attempt to mask their shortcomings. But simply shouting that everything you don't understand (and haven't even put any effort into trying to understand) must be nonsense is just a silly thing to say.
+ Show Spoiler + The philosopher Theodor W. Adorno, who maintained that nothing radical could come of common sense, wrote sentences that made his readers pause and reflect on the power of language to shape the world. A sentence of his such as ''Man is the ideology of dehumanization'' is hardly transparent in its meaning. Adorno maintained that the way the word ''man'' was used by some of his contemporaries was dehumanizing.
Taken out of context, the sentence may seem vainly paradoxical. But it becomes clear when we recognize that in Adorno's time the word ''man'' was used by humanists to regard the individual in isolation from his or her social context. For Adorno, to be deprived of one's social context was precisely to suffer dehumanization. Thus, ''man'' is the ideology of dehumanization.
Herbert Marcuse once described the way philosophers who champion common sense scold those who propagate a more radical perspective: ''The intellectual is called on the carpet. . . . Don't you conceal something? You talk a language which is suspect. You don't talk like the rest of us, like the man in the street, but rather like a foreigner who does not belong here. We have to cut you down to size, expose your tricks, purge you.''
The accused then responds that ''if what he says could be said in terms of ordinary language he would probably have done so in the first place.'' Understanding what the critical intellectual has to say, Marcuse goes on, ''presupposes the collapse and invalidation of precisely that universe of discourse and behavior into which you want to translate it.''
Of course, translations are sometimes crucial, especially when scholars teach. A student for whom a word such as ''hegemony'' appears strange might find that it denotes a dominance so entrenched that we take it for granted, and even appear to consent to it -- a power that's strengthened by its invisibility.
One may have doubts that ''hegemony'' is needed to describe how power haunts the common-sense world, or one may believe that students have nothing to learn from European social theory in the present academy. But then we are no longer debating the question of good and bad writing, or of whether ''hegemony'' is an unlovely word. Rather, we have an intellectual disagreement about what kind of world we want to live in, and what intellectual resources we must preserve as we make our way toward the politically new
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Guess you guys aren't a fan of a lot of the top French intellectuals in the past. Their stuff can be a headache to read.
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On April 09 2018 06:46 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On April 09 2018 05:23 zlefin wrote:On April 09 2018 05:12 IgnE wrote:On April 09 2018 05:02 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:On April 09 2018 04:16 IgnE wrote:What is so damning about Peterson for me, is not that he tells stories about the pancake-dragon, it's his completely disingenuous use and abuse of figures like Nietzsche and Orwell. Reading that CurrentAffairs essay previously linked in this thread by kollin, I don't know how any intellectually honest person can read JP's use of Orwell's Wigan Pier and not be completely disillusioned with most of his pronouncements in areas outside of clinical psychology. The Wigar Pier quotation is totally damning in my view, and clearly reveals the unconscious ideological iceberg underneath all of his political opinions (JP's constant insistence that he is against all ideology should put everyone else on notice that he is, in fact, a deeply ideological man). If he can't even deal with Orwell in an intellectually honest manner, imagine how he thinks about all the "postmodern neo-marxists" he's always railing about. I didn't know if this was a philosophical/ psychological reference so I Google that term. That was a mistake. Thanks, Urban Dictionary. Besides his obsession with trying to make outdated and disproven Jungian analysis look credible, his insistence on taking mundane and unremarkable platitudes and making them sound as ridiculously wordy and confusing as possible (which equates to "brilliance" in the minds of his supporters), his victim blaming for sexual harassment in the workplace, his denial of any gender pay discrimination, and the fact that he says he identifies as a Christian yet doesn't believe in Jesus's resurrection story (which I think is a contradiction or at least an inconsistency, no?), didn't he also gain notoriety from refusing to follow university protocols on simply acknowledging gender equity (citing freedom of speech, as if his employers aren't allowed to try to enforce additional policies that are aimed towards fairness and acceptance of students)? The pancake-dragon story is in the currentaffairs essay kollin linked and that I relinked. Robinson transcribed one of Peterson's lectures where he is talking about the dragon of chaos and ropes in a story about a young child eating pancakes. I don't find Peterson to be "ridiculously wordy and confusing." I think that says more about the willingness of critics to appeal to the lowest common denominator than it does about any intended obscurantism on Peterson's part. "Look at this guy using big words, trying to be nuanced, and capitalizing words! What a pedant!" That linked article from current affairs seemed to me to make a pretty good case for peterson being needlessly wordy and confusing. what do you make of the part of the article wherein they claimed such (if you read the full article and remember your thoughts on that part)? I think it's a mostly cheap tactic by a critic who wants to criticize both Peterson's supposed wordiness and his very plain-spoken teaching style. I don't think a "good case" is made that someone is "needlessly wordy" by simply pulling out a detailed paragraph in a 600 page book that is supposed to comprehensively address some topic. Robinson effectively points to it, and says, "there's nothing there, and it's confusing to boot!" I didn't find that paragraph particularly confusing, did you? And I certainly don't understand criticism that on the one hand the man is too wordy and confusing, and on the other hand he's just a demagogic self-help guru speaking in simple sentences that are infinitely interpretable. I much prefer it when someone lays everything out somewhere, like Peterson seems to do in his writings, because it's much easier to point out where he smuggles in baseless assumptions, compared to the relatively "straight-forward" or "common-sense" approaches he takes when speaking, that offer much greater hermeneutical latitude. There's a certain fetish for "clear writing" that relies upon a strong belief in the possibility of unambiguous communication of meaning in the Anglosphere, and it annoys me when people who should know better cynically deploy it as part of a short-sighted rhetorical philistinism.
Yes, many people are obsessed with being able to understand others' arguments. How dare they have the expectation that an educator should be clear and concise and straightforward and comprehensible! Peterson's writing reminds me of middle schools students who repeat mundane statements and talk in circles just to reach the page requirement for the English assignment. I wouldn't be surprised if Peterson changes the margins and font sizes too.
On April 09 2018 07:00 Slaughter wrote:
Guess you guys aren't a fan of a lot of the top French intellectuals in the past. Their stuff can be a headache to read.
Do they make insightful points though? That could be a pretty important difference.
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EPT
