Does Extremist Media Inspire Violence or Curb It?

dteowner said:

You just defined tipping points for various situations. Right there. I see 'em. Now, I would prefer you avoid restricted parameters (the tipping point for court action is -10; the tipping point for a finger wag is -2; the tipping point for an ass-kicking is -100) because those tipping points are only valid as far as the end of your nose. For Thrasher, those points might be -12, -4, and -50 respectively, and that's simply no way to run a railroad.

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You have a very weird idea of "tipping point," dte. Those weren't thresholds; they were examples. I was trying to get across the idea of a continuous scale, both of actions and of reactions.

Second, it may not be the way to run a railroad, but in real life, that's how the railroad runs. It's all a big ol' mess of opinions, interests, values, views, and what have you. Imperfect, messy, often ugly, often unfair, but somehow it muddles along -- and we with it, as we try to make it better, one little bit at a time. Pretending it's something else yields beautiful neoclassical Fascist facades, but underneath it's all the same rot, only hidden where it festers all the worse. I prefer to bring all that mess to the surface and then make as much sense of it as I can.

Ultimately, it's a proactive/reactive problem. I set up DTE's Grand Tome of Binary Law up front and everybody can operate as they please within that framework. Maybe add an Appendix A on rare occasion to account for time marching on. You have to add another page to PJ's Evergrowing Book of Subjective Situationals every single @%@%$& time some rube somewhere does something unexpected. I take a rigidity penalty (meaning I have a hard time making those "feel good" exceptions you seem to love) but I blow your doors off with efficiency and consistency.

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Then how come no dictatorship in history has actually worked like that? They all turn into inefficient, corrupt, nasty, messy dictatorships, sooner or later. What have you discovered that makes yours any different from Caesar, Franco, Hitler, Stalin, Kim Il Sung, Mussolini, and all the rest?

Well at least you agree that the world cannot be described just with a binary reponse to every situation.

Ignorance of complexity in the real world is how all the Bushies got us into the current sad state of affairs.

Prime Junta said:

You have a very weird idea of "tipping point," dte. Those weren't thresholds; they were examples. I was trying to get across the idea of a continuous scale, both of actions and of reactions.

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It's like pulling teeth, but I suppose I should give you credit for tenaciously clinging to your disbelief. Let us consider the topic of murder. Is murder acceptable, or unacceptable, PJ? I expect your answer will be something along the lines of "unacceptable except under certain specific situations such as self defense", right? Congratulations, you just managed a binary response with restricted parameters. That wasn't so hard, was it? No scalars. No subjective BS. No bleeding heart touchie-feelie. No ivory tower psychobabble. Nice and clean. +100XP for you!

Now, let's go for proving level 2. Were you to answer, "unacceptable expect under certain specific situations, such as: self defense, declared war, undeclared war, insanity, diminished faculty, impaired judgment, really really bad day, white man yelled nigger in Harlem, victim of long-term abuse, vigilante justice, PMS, bastard cut me off in traffic, etc etc for about 3 pages", then I'm going to call you out for so many restricted parameter sets that your answer has no practical application and send you back to the drawing board because your answer doesn't answer anything. Congratulations, you just managed to understand the problems with restricted parameters. +75XP!

Prime Junta said:

Second, it may not be the way to run a railroad, but in real life, that's how the railroad runs. It's all a big ol' mess of opinions, interests, values, views, and what have you. Imperfect, messy, often ugly, often unfair, but somehow it muddles along -- and we with it, as we try to make it better, one little bit at a time.

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Hooey. The railroad runs on decisions. Answers. It's all well and good to ponder and consider, but *absolutely nothing* occurs until some poor bastard steps up and makes a decision. Now whether you want that poor bastard to be Dictator DTE or the Central Committee is up to you, but the end result is the same. Ultimately, you're spouting decadence--philosophy over industry, subjective over objective, debate over action. How's that pan out in your real world? There's your rot right there.

Prime Junta said:

Then how come no dictatorship in history has actually worked like that? They all turn into inefficient, corrupt, nasty, messy dictatorships, sooner or later. What have you discovered that makes yours any different from Caesar, Franco, Hitler, Stalin, Kim Il Sung, Mussolini, and all the rest?

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That's a rather deep question, but I'd say it comes down to chaos monkey theory. Man chafes at order, so DTE's Tome won't be popular with the masses. Ultimately, the self-indulgent monkeys want chaos, so they tear down any attempts to confine them within any strictures. Strangely enough, the monkeys seem to be doing a pretty good job tearing down democracy, too, don't they, either by tyranny of the majority or subversion by the minority. Democracy is just more resistant to chaos since its very nature is fluid to begin with.

dte wrote:

That's a rather deep question, but I'd say it comes down to chaos monkey theory. Man chafes at order, so DTE's Tome won't be popular with the masses. Ultimately, the self-indulgent monkeys want chaos, so they tear down any attempts to confine them within any strictures. Strangely enough, the monkeys seem to be doing a pretty good job tearing down democracy, too, don't they, either by tyranny of the majority or subversion by the minority. Democracy is just more resistant to chaos since its very nature is fluid to begin with.

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At my great age, I've come to the conclusion that there are seldom clear and irrefutable answers but you have to act as if there are. Rather than absolutes, everything is situational. Yes, that can be carried to evil or useless extremes (Torture is bad when it happens to you but good when you do it to someone else for a "good" reason) but the more you try to impose order on the nature of man artificially, the more you get a chaotic and violent response. Thus I'm agreeing with your conclusion here, but I still don't see how the method you advocate gets you anything better.

I'd like to go back to an earlier point and get your explanation one more time because I'm just not grasping it. That is, the racism vs reverse racism button that seems to be one of your real difficulties, and where you see hypocrisy so often. Always confuses me. Earlier, you referred to Obama's comment about the police as knee-jerk reverse racism. Why?

He seemed to me to be playing by the same rule book as you are AFAICT--reacting to an incident from his own racial identity, and feeling it's wrong to be profiled. To me, that's exactly the same position you take up when blacks criticize whites. Do you feel neither side has a right to the nasty little name-calling ? I can go along that road fairly easier up to a point, but then there *is* a point where you have to say some people have more reason to fight back and call names than others.

That is, once again I'm dragging in the situational, but I don't see how it can be ignored.

magerette said:

At my great age, I've come to the conclusion that there are seldom clear and irrefutable answers but you have to act as if there are. Rather than absolutes, everything is situational. Yes, that can be carried to evil or useless extremes (Torture is bad when it happens to you but good when you do it to someone else for a "good" reason) but the more you try to impose order on the nature of man artificially, the more you get a chaotic and violent response. Thus I'm agreeing with your conclusion here, but I still don't see how the method you advocate gets you anything better.

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Call me a dreamer, I guess. Life is compromise, but you continually work toward the ideal. To bring back a previous discussion, I've defined a significant component of my utopia neighborhood (rigorous order) and I consistently attempt to move toward it.

magerette said:

I'd like to go back to an earlier point and get your explanation one more time because I'm just not grasping it. That is, the racism vs reverse racism button that seems to be one of your real difficulties, and where you see hypocrisy so often. Always confuses me. Earlier, you referred to Obama's comment about the police as knee-jerk reverse racism. Why?

He seemed to me to be playing by the same rule book as you are AFAICT--reacting to an incident from his own racial identity, and feeling it's wrong to be profiled. To me, that's exactly the same position you take up when blacks criticize whites. Do you feel neither side has a right to the nasty little name-calling ? I can go along that road fairly easier up to a point, but then there *is* a point where you have to say some people have more reason to fight back and call names than others.

That is, once again I'm dragging in the situational, but I don't see how it can be ignored.

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I don't put a lot of stock in racial identity, but the following would still be valid if I did, just more complicated. Let's try this.

David Duke looks at a black man and automatically sees a lesser person solely because of his skin color. No facts, no context, just skin color.

Barack Obama looks at a white cop and automatically sees an oppressor solely because of his skin color. No facts, no context, just skin color.

(Safe to say Barack would have been silent had Crowley been black, isn't it?)

The first example we shout down as racism, which it is. The second one we excuse or even applaud??? There's absolutely no difference between those stances. I honestly don't know how to make the position any plainer than that.

It would be if that were all there were to it, yes. And I do grasp that. But there are a few problems for me seeing it that way.

The only way your Obama = David Duke comparison holds up imo is if Obama looks at any random white cop on the street and says to Michele, that's an oppressor because he's white. IOW, it's his basic assumption in any situation that white cops will oppress blacks. That could be the case, but to me that's drawing an inference, not observing a fact.

Obama made his remark in a particular context, without all the facts I agree, but based on a historical likelihood, that a white man breaking into his own home has less of a chance at being assumed to be a burglar than a black man, and the corollary that a black man might feel more anger at being wrongfully accused in that situation than said honky.

However, you've reduced it to it's most ultra-basic components, and though I don't think things are that simple, I'll agree with you that racism is racism, and not logical or reasoned, and there is certainly a race-specific judgment in Obama's remark, so according to your logic defending the position is splitting hairs. You're saying, if I get your drift, that there's no excuses/extenuating circumstances allowed.

Thanks for 'splainin and please set me straight if I've misinterpreted a very clear statement.

magerette said:

Obama made his remark in a particular context, without all the facts I agree, but based on a historical likelihood, that a white man breaking into his own home has less of a chance at being assumed to be a burglar than a black man, and the corollary that a black man might feel more anger at being wrongfully accused in that situation than said honky.

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[mirror]
Duke made his judgment in a particular context...but based on a historical likelihood, that a black man has less chance of being educated (segregated schools back in the day, inner-city schools for younger subjects, limited access to expensive higher education) and a higher likelihood of being a criminal (based on both percentage of prison population and percentage of racial members in prison), thus, less valuable to society.
[/mirror]

Ready to jump on that bus? Historical likelihood isn't too many steps from stereotype, and we know how well that generally pans out. I'm not condemning the logic, BTW, nor even denying the historical precedents, but it falls right back to the same goose-n-gander argument. If the RPGWatch court allows one justification, it's obligated to allow the other, or freely accept my accusations of hypocrisy.

Given the choice of accepting Duke's position, or condemning Barack's? I'm not going to accept Duke's justification under any circumstance because peoples iz peoples, so my apologies to the President, but his justification (right, wrong, or indiffeent) is likewise stricken from the record and the jury must find him guilty of racism.

'Kay. I get your drift. What about this mirror?

Fantasy David Duke is biracial and lives his formative years with a black family. He then goes on to a primarily black university (such as Langston, maybe) and is elected president of oh, the football review. He then is elected to office with a predominantly black support team and appoints primarily black people as staff and in positions of power. He then makes a comment that whites aren't always treated fairly by blacks when a racially charged incident involving a friend occurs. Is our now very hypothetical David Duke suddenly a full fledged racist complete with a deep seated hatred of the black race and culture?

Or is he just telling the truth? What thinks ye?

dteowner said:

It's like pulling teeth, but I suppose I should give you credit for tenaciously clinging to your disbelief. Let us consider the topic of murder. Is murder acceptable, or unacceptable, PJ?

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Unacceptable by definition, of course. The definition of "murder" is something like "unacceptable homicide," so of course unacceptable homicide is unacceptable.

I expect your answer will be something along the lines of "unacceptable except under certain specific situations such as self defense", right? Congratulations, you just managed a binary response with restricted parameters. That wasn't so hard, was it? No scalars. No subjective BS. No bleeding heart touchie-feelie. No ivory tower psychobabble. Nice and clean. +100XP for you!

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Wrong guess, though. You're not doing too well so far.

Now, let's go for proving level 2. Were you to answer, "unacceptable expect under certain specific situations, such as: self defense, declared war, undeclared war, insanity, diminished faculty, impaired judgment, really really bad day, white man yelled nigger in Harlem, victim of long-term abuse, vigilante justice, PMS, bastard cut me off in traffic, etc etc for about 3 pages", then I'm going to call you out for so many restricted parameter sets that your answer has no practical application and send you back to the drawing board because your answer doesn't answer anything. Congratulations, you just managed to understand the problems with restricted parameters. +75XP!

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You're still deep in the woods, though, 'cuz that's not what I answered.

However, were I to ask *you* if you believe that it's acceptable to kill another human being, I believe that your answer would be very much like the one you just expected me to give. That's certainly what I believe -- that, as a general rule, it's unacceptable to kill another human being, but there are exceptional circumstances in which it's less unacceptable, or even acceptable (e.g. in self-defense or defense of another, when no non-lethal means of self-defense are available).

Hooey. The railroad runs on decisions. Answers. It's all well and good to ponder and consider, but *absolutely nothing* occurs until some poor bastard steps up and makes a decision. Now whether you want that poor bastard to be Dictator DTE or the Central Committee is up to you, but the end result is the same. Ultimately, you're spouting decadence--philosophy over industry, subjective over objective, debate over action. How's that pan out in your real world? There's your rot right there.

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It's panned out pretty well in my country, as a matter of fact. There's a lot of room for improvement, of course, but I'm overall pretty happy with the way we govern ourselves.

That's a rather deep question, but I'd say it comes down to chaos monkey theory. Man chafes at order, so DTE's Tome won't be popular with the masses. Ultimately, the self-indulgent monkeys want chaos, so they tear down any attempts to confine them within any strictures. Strangely enough, the monkeys seem to be doing a pretty good job tearing down democracy, too, don't they, either by tyranny of the majority or subversion by the minority. Democracy is just more resistant to chaos since its very nature is fluid to begin with.

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Yet your democracy has endured (sort of) for over 200 years, which is about the average lifespan of a civilization. The French one has lasted nearly as long. Ours is closing in on a century, and doesn't show too many signs of decline. Several of them are even getting better.

Prime Junta said:

That's certainly what I believe -- that, as a general rule, it's unacceptable to kill another human being, but there are exceptional circumstances in which it's less unacceptable, or even acceptable (e.g. in self-defense or defense of another, when no non-lethal means of self-defense are available).

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me said:

I expect your answer will be something along the lines of "unacceptable except under certain specific situations such as self defense"

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Your conclusion is "Wrong guess, though. You're not doing too well so far."??? Your quote is the same words as mine, with an extra disclaimer ("less acceptable") that's immediately overridden ("even acceptable"). No functional difference. If this is how you're gonna play it, there's no point to continuing the conversation. You're being contrary to avoid an admission. Fair enough. Moving on.

dteowner said:

Your conclusion is "Wrong guess, though. You're not doing too well so far."??? Your quote is the same words as mine, with an extra disclaimer ("less acceptable") that's immediately overridden ("even acceptable"). No functional difference. If this is how you're gonna play it, there's no point to continuing the conversation. You're being contrary to avoid an admission. Fair enough. Moving on.

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Not so. You asked specifically about murder, not generally about killing a human being.

If that was a poor choice of words and you *meant* "killing a human being," just say so, and I'll adjust my answer accordingly.

What do you think, is it ever acceptable to kill a human being?

Let's coin the new verb, Fred, that gets us around your pointless pedantry. Appropriate usage shall be:
Fred (v): To transition a person from the land of the living to the land of the not-so-living; See: murder, kill, slay, bust a cap in, choke the livin shit out of, give him/her what (s)he had comin', swim with the fishes, concrete shoes
And your tenses:
Today I Fred.
Yesterday I done Fredded.
I have Freddied many times.
I am Fredding right now.

I'm strongly in favor of capital punishment, so yes I think it is (ever) acceptable to kill a human being. You can Fred them, too. I suppose, if I was being difficult like you, I could ask you to define "human being" since I might consider death row inmates to be a wholly different breed, heretofor defined as "pond scum" (perhaps we should coin a new noun, "Steve"?), which would allow me to answer your question "no" on a manufactured technicality purely for the purpose of avoiding the point.

It's a valid point, though, dte. Murder and killing are different. Murder already implies unacceptable killing. It's like asking someone when they are in favor of rape, and they answer you by saying they're in favor of sex as long as it's voluntary and not forced or cooerced.

If the point of my original question wasn't painfully obvious to anyone that wasted some portion of their lives reading it, my most humble apologies. He's clinging to technicalities to avoid the point, just as I said.

I don't think there's anyone who doesn't have at least one scenario where they would find it acceptable to kill a human being. I know I have several.

dteowner said:

If the point of my original question wasn't painfully obvious to anyone that wasted some portion of their lives reading it, my most humble apologies. He's clinging to technicalities to avoid the point, just as I said.

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I apologize, dte, but I'm not. I am trying to answer your questions as honestly, precisely, and clearly as I can. I even included an answer to the question I thought you might have wanted to ask, and, indeed, it was pretty much as you expected. Your use of the word "murder" simply threw me off, as I'm trying my best not to read anything into your posts that you're not actually saying (since I know from experience that that sort of thing rarely leads to anything good).

So here it is again, substituting "killing another human being" for "murder": I believe that as a general rule it is unacceptable to kill other human beings, but there are some specific circumstances that make it less unacceptable, or even acceptable, or, very rarely, desirable.

I also believe that these specific circumstances constitute a continuum -- a scalar -- that ranges from "wholly unacceptable" to "a moral imperative," with most circumstances quite close to the "wholly unacceptable" end of the range.

How does my position differ from yours, at this general level? I'm sure that we could find plenty of differences regarding specific circumstances (e.g. I am entirely opposed to capital punishment, with the sole exception of war crimes), but that's a bit beside the point. Right?

LOL! Clearly there is a significant difference between "murder", "manslaughter", and "killing someone". Otherwise, we would not have invented the words and built them into our laws.

Are those differences even remotely relevant to the point? No. Thus, pedantry, just as I said. LOL right back atcha as usual, Thrasher.

Yes, if you use those words, they mean something different. It's not pedantry. It's clear and honest commminication.

But then if one's intent is to obsfucate, then I guess it serves one's purpose...