The video pretty drastically oversold the benefits of Political Correctness, in my opinion. I do, however, completely agree that generic "politeness" is a far superior standard to hold yourself to or goal to aspire to.

PC vs politeness seems very highly analogous to perceiving things as either intrinsically "offensive" or being personally "offended". Humor is frequently a fantastic way of exploring those kinds differences, and SMBC comics did an excellent strip on offensive vs offended:
http://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2011-02-23

The conclusion there is that "I'm offended" starts arguments (ie., it can create rational and beneficial dialog) while "offensive" ends them (ie., it stifles progress). I feel that it is equally accurate to say that politeness can help resolve problems while PCness really doesn't; it is possible to politely disagree, but in the realm of PC disagreement in and of itself is often deemed offensive and seen as something to be discouraged.

I think part of being an adult is learning that people will often disagree, and that is actually a good thing.

I look at it in a simple way: words having meanings; people have motivations. A conversation has a context, and in your example the passerby isn't aware of that context. If she chooses to eavesdrop and feels offended, well, while I do feel sorry for her...it's really not any of her business what you and your brother are conversing about. You might as well turn to her, give her a once-over and criticize her choice of pantsuit. She doesn't know you; she didn't ask for your opinion; and your retort probably made her upset.

Should people try to be aware of their surroundings and try not to say inappropriate things? Of course, but that's just common courtesy...like not commenting on a funky smell at a funeral visitation. Political correctness is fine if we all agree, but we usually don't. And therefore we get people who virtue signal over others because they refuse to kowtow to the newest linguistic fashion.

Now, I'm a fairly polite guy. I hold open doors, give up my seat, offer to carry heavy packages, smile, wave and nod greetings to many strangers, etc. Yet I still occasionally get someone who disagrees with my legitimate use of a term (as I understand its meaning). Generally, I still apologize...but I don't then re-evaluate my language ability. I'm not willing to let the connotations of words take on new, questionable-yet-popular meanings.

I've had a Native American friend laugh at me for asking what he preferred I say: redskin, indian, aboriginal, first people, etc. I've also asked a "retarded" person if they preferred if I said "intellectually challenged." He preferred retarded because...wait for it...he had a lot of trouble saying the other one. Now that's irony.

I think my heart's in the right place. I was taught to be polite, and I try to be at all times. But it gets under my skin to have a total stranger "chastise" me when they know nothing about me. Frankly, I find it more offensive to interrupt and belittle a stranger than it is to overhear some stranger's questionable utterance.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Fox and Friends just casually take a dump on habeas corpus- and call it "political correctness" what a bunch of dipshits.

what classified info has Trump handed over?
who says?

NSA, CIA, FBI and joint chiefs all said once again had to waste time saying it never happened... liberal media continues making shit up.

man I've never seen liberals so crybaby over losing, and seeing their political correctness being dismantled

i agree that, generally speaking, the best way to deal with stupidity is to let it expose and screw itself. but there is definitely a limit to that, a point where the stupid becomes too big to stop, and you have to take a stand before its too late.

I dont think that was the case here (though all I know of peterson is what was in the CBC article). But I would definitely protest if my university was paying an idiot a ton of money to give a speech where they could make themselves look smart; and lets not be naive, for all the calls for "free speech" and "debate", usually these speakers take few questions and dodge anything critical with the host moderators protecting them from embarrassment. So if my university wants to pay kissinger or hillary hundreds of thousands of dollars to talk about human rights or ethics, yes I would protest that...

this guy is small fry and is basically looking for it to validate his position, as the article stated other speakers declined precisely because they could foresee that the free speech vs political correctness summit having a speaker whose contribution to the discussion is: "[he] does not recognize another person's right to determine what pronouns he uses to address them." I dont care what whose beliefs are, if you dont want to call someone how they want to be called, you are looking for a fight. and if the other person does not recognize your right to self determine how to address them?! Wow, so deep. this is really what university is for!

my response also comes from a recent discussion elsewhere, regarding the pervasiveness/frequency of the "safe space, snowflake, trigger warning" phenomena that occasionally comes up in videos like these. how many people actually have personal experiences, even indirectly, with professors giving trigger warnings or of a safe space? i have several professors in my circle of friends and family and none have ever witnessed it.

There are some valid points here, but I think there are multiple interpretations to these issues and it's not so clear cut.

I'll just pick an easy one. Trigger warnings are no more a restriction of free speech then calling a movie rated R VS PG13, it's just more specific, so lets get that out of the way. Take a read of a classic like John Stuart Mills “On Liberty”. He does a great dissemination of freedom and balancing it with causing harm developing the harm principle and the offense principle. It's well thought out and addresses these very issues. There is a recognition that free speech should be regulated depending on if it causes harm. For instance it's illegal to yell “fire!” in a crowded movie theater since it could cause harm from a stampede of people trying to leave. I apologize if I get things wrong, but the following is my understanding here, but look here if you're interested. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stuart_Mill#Theory_of_liberty)

It's a difficult concept to define what is an act of harm. In general this is highly related to concepts of political correctness and has it's very roots in classical liberal thought. In my understanding, Mill would say not to restrict free speech in the case offense only in the case of harm. However, psychology and neuroscience make this line less distinct in caseses of trama or deep internalized concepts where we might see words leading to genuine harm of an individual, not just offense. This means that harm is less universal and depends on the individual and it leads to the idea of separating spaces based on the line between offense and harm. My understanding is the idea of rating systems, red light districts come from this. Also, now, a newer concept of safe spaces. It's easy to say that people should just suck it up, but it's not always that clear cut and there is historical precedence for this idea.

It seems like Bill Maher is gonna be calling out resurgences of political correctness forever. I like the term "cry-bullies" and how well it fits the people who are constantly outraged and demanding the heads of all who cross them. Thanks to the internet they're more pervasive and annoying than ever.

I don't believe anyone is talking about legislating "words" as such.

If anyone brought up a law that said you can't say "nigger" or "queer", that would be stupid.

But as always, context matters. There's a world of difference between calling someone a "nigger" and advocating the killing of black people.

Hell, you can couch horrible ideals in "politically correct" speech and espouse progressive ideals in offensive language.

What @gorillaman said was wrong and hopefully he would apologize.


However according what you said below you are not for free speech? Is that a good thing?

Does that not make you more like the Nazi, KKK and the left or Right who demean swaths of people?

In an open society you have to be able to tolerate the good, bad and ugly other wise we end up with political correctness and Social Justice Warriors.

Suddenly accuracy and detail become popular, and all it took was for the worst developed world leadership candidate in modern history to win the presidency of the US.

Do the words horse, stable and bolted mean anything to anyone?

We're about 10 years into post truth politics by now, and it seems a strange thing to me to start the fight-back here, on individual comments made by people beholden to themselves. Rather than opinion-shaping mass media printing literal lies.

Let he who did not engage in hyperbole during Trump's campaign cast the first stone. Everyone's suddenly twice the pedantic nerd I ever am when the phrase "post truth" becomes en vogue.

I don't want to be a dick or anything, but look at the backlash to all this policing of PC language. People were happy to give a potential president of the US the leeway to be sexist and xenophobic because of political correctness fatigue. Do you really want to do the same thing but with FACTS? Because that's where this ends...

2024 -- "Oh you can't say anything these days without being sure you're 100% correct and accurate and can't be misconstrued! So what if the president's opinion on climate change doesn't involve facts? It's about time someone spoke their mind without the fact-checking police getting involved!"

I genuinely don't want to be a dick about it. But if I am one, I'm pretty sure I do also have a good point.

I think her argument is incredibly flawed.
It misses out the crucial aspect of training. An umbrella needs no instruction to function inside the parameters it's designed for. It's comes ready for use. Babies, however, require a lot of resources and training to perform even somewhat satisfactory. The amount of time you need to invest to train tricks, like walking and not-pooping-the-pants successfully, greatly outweights the demanded time period to acustomise yourself with the functions and limitations of a new umbrella. To even learn the boundaries of what babies are capable of leads quite often to a frustrating process of trial and error that can render your baby unusable. Which leads of to the next issue.
To procure an umbrella you have varying retail options, including online distribution, as well as exchange of services or goods among acquaintances. For some unfathomable reason, these options are frowned upon by a political correctness obsessed society in regards to babies. The only viable option that won't cause offense among your peers is manufacturing one yoursef. Imagine what our economy would look like if we handeled all goods this way. It's preposterous!
So you are stuck with whatever baby you can produce on your own, relying on unskilled labor in most cases. Not only do you have to go through the time consuming and strenuous acts of sexual activity, which we all now can lead to severe cases of depression and anxiety, there is a unreasonable waiting time included as well. Imagine you had to wait 9 months for every Amazon delivery. This is just customer harassment.
Loosing an umbrella is not worse than losing a baby but it's not because of reasons that cannot be fixed. If we as a society would work together and openly oppose the unfair unequality in treatment of babies and umbrellas, our lives could be improved in unpredecented ways. But we don't. We are all to blame for this.

I'm voting Trump but I'm anti political correctness, anti sjw , anti hypersensitive

But I'm not in the electoral college so votes don't matter anyhow, an elector can vote any way they wish, there is no rule they have to vote how the state tells them. It's happened a few times in past.

They are called "Faithless Elector" , they have Wiki and bunch of sites on them

An elector can ignore the state popular vote and give the electoral to whomever

Oh, I already know how much you care about facts and just bend them the way you need them. But Ill bite. Once.

At least half of that is a lie, not based on actual facts, only on your interpretation, and has been proven wrong already. Yet you guys still believe it. And on the other side you dont believe the stuff about Hillary, that has been proven long ago, and every normal person would have been jailed for it long ago and lost all support from true ethic people. I mentioned the hypocrisy. And you have proven my points perfectly. Youre going off over words.

Its unmasking how you believe so much stuff that is based not once on facts, and yet you only mention the emails on Hillary. Only one thing.
Seriously? Do you think I will start a proper discussion with someone that biased? You guys make a joke of yourselves, and then wonder why people like Trump get more and more support. You dont even get how you only hurt yourself with sick thinking like that. You dont know cause and effect, and thats why you dont get whats going on in the world because of politically correct liars like Hillary. Your hypocrisy is choking me. Maybe thats your tactic though? You having no facts, and thus annoying the shit out of people with such bullshit and hypocrisy, that they wont even bother with you, so you can keep spewing that crap without intelligent people touching you, because they know its useless with you guys. Whatever, as I said, youre only hurting yourselves with jumping on lies, like the side you accuse of them, marking yourself with a big fat red bullseye for manipulators to target you even more.

You can just not vote then because it wont change anything.

I just dont get how some of you Americans are so afraid of Trump. Yeah, hes a loudmouth, but thats about it. He talks a lot of crap, but a lot is lied about or blown up by the media. He didnt show yet what he can do. Hillary on the other hand has shown very well what kind of sick despicable stuff she does and how much she cares about it getting public: She just lies more and puts up her creepy disconnected grin when confronted with it.

I think it shows perfectly whats wrong with the USA. Words mean more to you than actions. Fits perfectly into the Americans hypocrite stereotype. You have been lied to so much that you adapted it yourselves and thus hiding behind political correctness gives some kind of protection from the truth that has been going on for decades, not only in your own country, but especially the shit you did in other countries, killing millions of people, causing the mess we are in today. And here comes a guy who doesnt give a shit about it and just speaks his mind. Must be scary for a lot of people, who have been lying to themselves and others for their whole lives, I guess.