Naked Science Forum
General Discussion & Feedback => Just Chat! => Topic started by: Pseudoscience-is-malarkey on 07/04/2022 13:55:20
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For example, if a notable person is caught making a racist comment, or voices denial of something like climate change or the holocaust, should they be "canceled"?
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No. Let the fool speak. Some people find nobility in martyrdom but there is no glory in ridicule.
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Only hate speech should be censored, not cancelled, cancelling is a new dictator style idea. Free speech is the rule, the right. Science should be civilly debated.
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cancelling is a new dictator style idea.
Not really new.
https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/54474/1/U584575.pdf
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Very difficult question, I know people who said smth bad and then changed their opinions. I think public shaming is sometimes enough
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Only hate speech should be censored, not cancelled, cancelling is a new dictator style idea. Free speech is the rule, the right. Science should be civilly debated.
That in itself is hate speech, leveled against those you disagree with. Please censor yourself.
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The problem with censorship is that it hides the uglier facts of history and can ruin a good song.
The former is obvious but this morning I watched a vintage film clip about the composed of "Lily of Laguna". The harmless chorus is very familiar but like most songs that were born in the musical theater, it has a long introductory verse.
So there on the screen was an obviously white singer and dancer wearing ridiculous black makeup (it's theater history, like it or not) and giving an excellent rendition of the entire song, but with sudden, intrusive silences where the lyric demanded a word rhyming with "bigger" or "moon".
Slightly off the subject, Channel 5 ran a good documentary series a year or so ago about life on a warship. At one point the ship was under attack by a bunch of baddies in speedboats. Marines were called to action and were seen boarding their boat and helicopter with the clear intention to sink the speedboats and kick the sh1t out of the gentlemen with teacloths on their heads. Cut to adverts. Return to program, with a warning "The following sequence contains strong language". Never mind the mayhem and flying body parts, apparently if a Marine says "bugger" it could upset someone.
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I think that indiscriminate canceling is a bad thing.
There are people who we would consider enlightened by the standards of their day, but who also did some things that we might disagree with today. Do we cancel the whole person, forgetting that they actually contributed to progress (as we measure it today)?
This often comes out in the context of those who owned slaves, at a time when most rich people owned slaves. Perhaps we should look at how they treated their slaves, rather than the fact that they owned slaves.
- Or in those who wanted to abolish slavery, but who had, at some point in their life had owned slaves.
What about people in the arts, who we now discover did things which we don't approve?
Rather than tear down their statue, do we put a an extra plaque on their plinth, saying that "In 2022, we find good evidence that this person did X, Y & Z. This was made illegal by the ABC bill of 2015..."?
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Nobody ever criticises the tribal elders who sold the slaves in the first place. Why not?
The same mentality criticises wealthy people for buying village homes at inflated prices and "driving the villagers out". Illogical. Nobody willingly pays more than the seller is asking, so the "guilty" party is surely the greedy villager who sells the house.
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Only hate speech should be censored, not cancelled, cancelling is a new dictator style idea. Free speech is the rule, the right. Science should be civilly debated.
That in itself is hate speech, leveled against those you disagree with. Please censor yourself.
My hate speech? I don't understand. Are you saying you are communist?
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Only hate speech should be censored, not cancelled, cancelling is a new dictator style idea. Free speech is the rule, the right. Science should be civilly debated.
That in itself is hate speech, leveled against those you disagree with. Please censor yourself.
My hate speech? I don't understand. Are you saying you are communist?
Sounds like more hate speech.
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Nobody willingly pays more than the seller is asking,
The seller is, in principle asking for "all the money in the world", but what he settles for is "as much as the buyer who will offer the most is prepared to pay".
The problem really is that rich people can outbid poor ones.
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Rather than tear down their statue, do we put a an extra plaque on their plinth, saying that "In 2022, we find good evidence that this person did X, Y & Z. This was made illegal by the ABC bill of 2015..."?
OK, by that argument, should we put up a statue of Hitler (or some other villain- take your pick) and say we erected a statue of this guy just to announce how bad he was"?
The problem is that, pretty much by definition, a statue says that the person is seen as an example to follow. We don't erect statues to failures.
So having a statue to , for example, slave traders, sends a mixed message.
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I think that indiscriminate canceling is a bad thing.
There are people who we would consider enlightened by the standards of their day, but who also did some things that we might disagree with today. Do we cancel the whole person, forgetting that they actually contributed to progress (as we measure it today)?
This often comes out in the context of those who owned slaves, at a time when most rich people owned slaves. Perhaps we should look at how they treated their slaves, rather than the fact that they owned slaves.
- Or in those who wanted to abolish slavery, but who had, at some point in their life had owned slaves.
What about people in the arts, who we now discover did things which we don't approve?
Rather than tear down their statue, do we put a an extra plaque on their plinth, saying that "In 2022, we find good evidence that this person did X, Y & Z. This was made illegal by the ABC bill of 2015..."?
Is there an example on your mind of one such?
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Sounds like more hate speech.
I in my mind I hate communism, the mandates, the loss of free thought and enterprise, religion and the right treatment of human and animal life. I hate abortion and infanticide, I don't like the idea of people ending their own lives, at least they have a say in it.
I don't want to hurt communists, although adversaries like North Korean communists, I hope they topple, like Russia did.
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OK, by that argument, should we put up a statue of Hitler (or some other villain- take your pick) and say we erected a statue of this guy just to announce how bad he was"?
No, but erasing him from history would be worse.
a statue says that the person is seen as an example
Was, certainly. Is, maybe not.
Time is unidirectional. Where a statue exists, it summarises an earlier generation's approval and might usefully bear a later annotation, but I see no value in or enthusiasm for erecting new statues of anyone currently considered to be scum.
So, what does the panel think of Bomber Harris? Colonial warmonger or savior of multicultural democracy? Che Guevara - terrorist or liberator?
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I don't want to hurt communists, although adversaries like North Korean communists, I hope they topple, like Russia did.
So you want someone else to hurt them, and you approve of the current Russian regime?
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Is there an example on your mind of one such?
I was thinking of James Cook, the British explorer, who explored the east coast of Australia, around 1770.
- His statue in Sydney has been graffitied multiple times, accusing him of crimes against the aboriginal population
- There are suggestion that his statue in another location be removed
- But I don't think he committed any crimes against the aboriginal population - all he did was to describe the country to a population who didn't know about it
- This is unlike later settlers who certainly displaced the native population (often violently), and smallpox and other European disease had a devastating impact on the native population.
A better-known example is Abraham Lincoln, who (I have heard) is accused of keeping slaves when he was young.
- I did a quick search, and found that to be unlikely, so I didn't mention it.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_and_slavery
Perhaps a more dramatic example is John Newton, who was an active participant in the slave trade, but later realized that it was evil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Newton
For many of us today, we have our clothes made in near-slavery conditions, but out of sight, in other nations. How will history view us?
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North Korean communists
I'm not aware of any communists in North Korea.
Is there anyone there advocation the idea of "from each according to their abilities to each according to their needs"?
or is there a dictator who pretends to be communist?
Why is it that the only bit of soviet propaganda that anyone believes is that the USSR was communist?
Nobody believes that the "German Democratic Republic" was democratic. Why do they swallow the lie that it was socialist?
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Sounds like more hate speech.
I in my mind I hate communism, the mandates, the loss of free thought and enterprise, religion and the right treatment of human and animal life. I hate abortion and infanticide, I don't like the idea of people ending their own lives, at least they have a say in it.
I don't want to hurt communists, although adversaries like North Korean communists, I hope they topple, like Russia did.
My point is that one person's cause is another person's evil. Freedom fighters in Vietnam where commie rats in the USA in the 70s. Its quite easy to be interpreted as hate speech.
I admire the USA for its freedom of speech, they can say things that I would probably get a visit from a police officer for in the UK and perhaps a prison sentence. Freedom of speech does enable people to make complete fools of themselves, for example the USA congress protest and incursion.
The slavery re visitation seems once more to be a usa issue that is spilling over to us once more. Slavery has been banned already and judged as wrong. The social situation in the states though is compounded still by the slavery years, unlike in the UK and the former colonies which are pretty much entirely under their own sway.
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I don't want to hurt communists, although adversaries like North Korean communists, I hope they topple, like Russia did.
So you want someone else to hurt them, and you approve of the current Russian regime?
No, Gorbachev ended the regime, and at first at least, it was okay.
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Is there an example on your mind of one such?
I was thinking of James Cook, the British explorer, who explored the east coast of Australia, around 1770.
- His statue in Sydney has been graffitied multiple times, accusing him of crimes against the aboriginal population
- There are suggestion that his statue in another location be removed
- But I don't think he committed any crimes against the aboriginal population - all he did was to describe the country to a population who didn't know about it
- This is unlike later settlers who certainly displaced the native population (often violently), and smallpox and other European disease had a devastating impact on the native population.
A better-known example is Abraham Lincoln, who (I have heard) is accused of keeping slaves when he was young.
- I did a quick search, and found that to be unlikely, so I didn't mention it.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Lincoln_and_slavery
Perhaps a more dramatic example is John Newton, who was an active participant in the slave trade, but later realized that it was evil.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Newton
For many of us today, we have our clothes made in near-slavery conditions, but out of sight, in other nations. How will history view us?
These are some good examples. They can be judged badly in retrospect, but accomplished important things in their day. Newton was changed and helped the abolition cause later in life. A help behind Wilberforce.
It is better not to cancel them.
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No, Gorbachev ended the regime, and at first at least, it was okay.
That was 30 years ago. Do you approve of what has replaced it?
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No, Gorbachev ended the regime, and at first at least, it was okay.
That was 30 years ago. Do you approve of what has replaced it?
Putin is just a new dictator, he managed to destabilize the once democratic system. I think the reunification of North and South Korea would end up well.
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So do you approve of the state of modern Russia? In what ways is it preferable to the communist state that preceded it?
Which side should compromise to reunify Korea? What did we learn from Vietnam?
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So do you approve of the state of modern Russia? In what ways is it preferable to the communist state that preceded it?
Which side should compromise to reunify Korea? What did we learn from Vietnam?
I think it would end up like the reunification of Germany.
The communist states now have freedoms, more money, jobs, public services, no more deaths for faith or idealism, except for Putin's determination, that is in Russia and Ukraine is suffering. It is not like Gorbachev should not have tried.
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Under communism there was no parliamentary opposition. Nowadays,the leader of the opposition gets poisoned and imprisoned.
Communism provided public services and public ownership of basic industry. Privatisation resulted in a few crooks making huge profits through a bent tendering process and increasing the prices of fuel and food. The government is planning to reduce its healthcare budget. The employment rate has not changed significantly.
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Communism provided public services and public ownership of basic industry.
Communism was well known for providing top notch healthcare to all citizens, something that the west is incapable of.
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Under communism there was no parliamentary opposition. Nowadays,the leader of the opposition gets poisoned and imprisoned.
Communism provided public services and public ownership of basic industry. Privatisation resulted in a few crooks making huge profits through a bent tendering process and increasing the prices of fuel and food. The government is planning to reduce its healthcare budget. The employment rate has not changed significantly.
I'd say communism, as an evil work to start with demoralized Russians. So many of their own citizen were killed. Russia, the sleeping bear awoke with problems. The system reverted sometimes to capitalism, resulting in too powerful rich business men emerging, who were killed.
There is something about Russia, oligarchs, there are some behaviours from Russia only. Are there Polish, Hungarian or Croatian oligarchs...?
The loss of the government run system resulted in the tragedy of human trafficking, but not in east Germany.
I saw images and stories from Romanian orphanages, with the government system letting down. The boys heads shaven, rocking in boredom in their own urine. And a charity from a US base went in to serve them better.
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Communism provided public services and public ownership of basic industry.
Communism was well known for providing top notch healthcare to all citizens, something that the west is incapable of.
I think I like Bob Hawke's 1980s Medicare system. It is still going, voters love it.
The Romanian orphanages needed help from western charities. Healthcare was not perfect. Some stories emerge from England of foster children dying from bad treatment. Charitable workers and what motivates them helps. Romania should have been able to do better by employing preschool and other staff.
Basic industry was twenty or thirty years behind by 1990. In Hungary there was a disaster in which aluminum industry devices broke and leaked into the water ways. They were 1950 era technology, this was in around 2006.
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Communism was well known for providing top notch healthcare to all citizens, something that the west is incapable of.
Yes and no, I think. Just two anecdotes:
Back in the 1970s a friend wanted soft contact lenses - still something of a novelty at the time. Her rabidly anti-communist father said he would pay for them if she wrote him an essay explaining why they weren't available in the USSR. Her diligent research revealed that they were invented in Czechoslovakia and were generally provided free of charge behind the Iron Curtain.
By sheer coincidence my son suffered acute appendicitis in the UK at the same time as a classmate who was visiting Russia. His diagnosis and treatment were delayed and disorganised and days later he ended up with a scar that looks like a shark bite, having missed death by a few hours. She was hospitalised in an hour, diagnosed and in surgery with no delay, and returned home with two tiny incisions from very neat keyhole surgery. But her mum (who happened to be leading the school party) said that the food was awful and the nurses unpleasant.
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Communism was well known for providing top notch healthcare to all citizens, something that the west is incapable of.
Yes and no, I think. Just two anecdotes:
Back in the 1970s a friend wanted soft contact lenses - still something of a novelty at the time. Her rabidly anti-communist father said he would pay for them if she wrote him an essay explaining why they weren't available in the USSR. Her diligent research revealed that they were invented in Czechoslovakia and were generally provided free of charge behind the Iron Curtain.
By sheer coincidence my son suffered acute appendicitis in the UK at the same time as a classmate who was visiting Russia. His diagnosis and treatment were delayed and disorganised and days later he ended up with a scar that looks like a shark bite, having missed death by a few hours. She was hospitalised in an hour, diagnosed and in surgery with no delay, and returned home with two tiny incisions from very neat keyhole surgery. But her mum (who happened to be leading the school party) said that the food was awful and the nurses unpleasant.
I suppose, the story goes that stalin would have survived exept for the fact he shot most of the doctors in a recent purge. Overly communist healthcare had the reputation of being well staffed well funded, very good standards and well ordered, perhaps it was a sort of rebellion.
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Nobody survives.
Most people recover from a few illnesses and accidents, but life is exactly like cricket - eventually, you will be bowled, stumped, caught, run out, or LBW by something traumatic or unpleasant, and you get a round of applause if you make 100.
As it happened, Stalin made 74 and died from "a stroke", though history does not state if he played on to the stumps or was caught. Either way it was a reasonable score for a middle-order player (the opener, Marx, made 64 - they were a pretty solid team) and an honorable dismissal.