Ok, so how does knowing how to solve rubik's cube excuse him from speeding?
Cops are arbitrary dicks.

The reason why these campaigns will get nowhere: the subtleties asked for are sometimes too arbitrary and too subjective to expect large numbers to go along with it and because women are not always mind readers (contrary to what this one may think), and misinterpretations can easily occur. Some dangerous psychos and sociopaths actually come across as being quite "charming," while some friendly and innocuous comments may be interpreted as being rather creepy. So, campaigns like this will get nowhere in actually changing anything for the better.

The skills of understanding context will continue to devolve as communities break down (along with families and childhood education). Increasingly, we are living in a society of strangers, and this is yet another result of the statism that progressives continue to defend. See, it's all about feeling safe. And without community, contexts that feel safe become more scarce. A state-driven "society" is not a community.

Meanwhile, in reality, the very attempt to legislate behavior like this will serve to further develop two trends: the "catcall" culture they so dislike and something along the lines of what's going on in Japan, the other opposite. Despite what this video attempts to portray, I have already heard the complaint many many times from women that they either get harassment or they get no attention at all.

And this'll be yet another "I told you so" that they'll miss.

So in a movie where they have shuttles the size of mini-buses that can achieve orbit, his problem is the economics?

Fuck actual physics, an arbitrary human convention that describes the behaviour of other humans is depicted in a manner that is kinda implausible! Oh teh noes!

The subject of innovation vs jobs is an interesting one, but poorly addressed in this video.

Here's a much better take on it
*related=http://videosift.com/video/Humans-Need-Not-Apply

To quote the great Wittgenstein "meaning is use". Language and meaning are nuanced and complicated, but most of all, subjective and instrumental (by which I mean something we make up). This is why we frequently use otherwise restrictive and oversimplified analogies to illustrate specific points, and sometimes arbitrary (and always artificial) terms to sum up otherwise much more expansive phenomena.

In this case @Babymech used one to quite neatly surmise the different ways we interpret accidental puns and double meanings. Crude vs Prude was just a succinct way of labelling the two predominant archetypical responses to a potential double entendre.

One is to tend to overlook or ignore it (Prude)
One is to recognise and even call attention to it (Crude)

There were no value judgements implicit in the way @Babymech did this. You brought those yourself, projected them outwards and rather rudely set about insulting Babymech for the perceived slight/prejudicial remark.

The fact you got a rude response back was not validation, it was retaliation. You called him/her a dick basically without provocation!

"In some countries / regions, saying someone is crude is quite the insult."

A term charged with historical prejudicial hatred indeed! Absolutely no room for interpretation or innocent intention there. (And God forbid anyone anywhere ever be offended by something because they might have different associations with a words meanings and associations)

But let's just assume @Babymech was making a value judgement anyway. "Prude" and "Crude" create wildly varying emotional responses. From pride to shame. Who takes prescient? Who's right to not be offended counts most?

Much like considerably more sensitive words (like ones beginning with N and F for instance), context is absolutely everything. Words have no meaning outside of their context, they are entirely relativistic things. Even the cold hard definition in a dictionary is a contextual arrangement (in this case the dictionary & the linguistic paradigm which is documents).

If there was hatred in Babymech's heart when he/she made their comment I certainly did not recognise it. The same point made in a different way might have raised my ire too, but here I can only see a slight you brought to the table yourself so to speak.

I've done it myself before, but then I've also apologised for starting shit that wasn't really there before too

You would be correct if you detected a slightly snotty attitude in my reply, it pops up mostly when people start throwing around unsolicited abuse (or say unspeakably dumb things but I'm certainly not accusing you of that here, just a needless conflict). You'd be amazed how fast it can disappear though!

Much love.

I am often befuddled by the logic of what's allowed and what's not, and the seemingly arbitrary choice of same by different TSA employees... The cane that Ms. Robotcow is holding in the opening sequence looks like it might be able to inflict some serious damage by anyone skilled in the art of baseball. On a flight to Canada three weeks ago, we were not allowed to carry on a short (fits in the measuring device) 4 piece fishing rod with spinning reel attached, in a soft sided, zippered travel bag. Seemed they thought it could be weaponized. Thankfully, our driver was close enough to retrieve the offending package and take it back home. Oddly, on the return to USA, my fingernail clippers were confiscated as they had a fold out file - these were just good old Walgreen's, have carried them for 7 years and approx. 100 flights. I could do more damage with a key, a pen, a plastic knife or a wooden pencil. I also carry a beautiful blue machined aluminum pen/kubaton from Smith & Wesson, which is pointy, but hey, it's just a pen. I do give the TSA high marks for consistency in the application of inconsistent policies. Well done everybody.

GBH was certainly better than "not bad", but everyone I'd read/talked to spoke about it like it was the second coming. It's certainly the most "Wes Anderson" movie WA has done. I get it... you like symmetry! And why can't I compare it to his other movies? That seems kinda arbitrary since you're comparing Capn Murica to GBH.

And absolutely, Winter Soldier wasn't as good as Avengers or (Guardians for that matter).

But then, I still think my favourite movie of the year was the Lego movie

But surely thats the point?
If you are inclined to believe in some over-watching intelligence that is creating and playing us as a hobby (and I understand and sympathize with that emotional need so long as you don't start burning unbelievers) then why bother with complicated half-science based justifications?
If there's a big magic man in the sky why not just ignore science completely as those who perpetrated the dark ages did, instead of a neoliberal 95% concession to logic while still retaining the right to believe in magic?
I'm not trying to insult - just interested in how a clearly smart mind squares the circle: either the world is explicable (atomic level up anyway) or its the arbitrary caprice of a being that renders our thoughts redundant .. no?

@Stormsinger, then why can't I buy the music or tv shows I want from Amazon?

How come hulu or netflix aren't available in my country? I've said it before, I am happy to spend money on the content I want, just make it available to me for a reasonable price (i.e. not nearly double what people in the US are paying for it http://www.steamprices.com/au/topripoffs)

At what point is it my fault that there is literally no legal way for me to purchase the content I want due to an arbitrary geographical restriction?

So if the entire internet is an experiment in alternative monetization, it's a dismal fucking failure.

You want some examples that work?

Steam Sales
Louis CK selling his entire show for $5
Kickstarter (hell Star Citizen alone)

Some people will always choose free. Fine, maybe they just can't afford it, and telling them to just not watch it is never going to work. Forget those people. Focus on the ones who believe that good content deserves rewarding. Make it easy for them to access your content (reasonable price, no drm or arbitrary restrictions) and they will pay.

Trying to stop piracy is pointless. It's out there and as I said, someone people genuinely have a moral issue with paying for content (the OSS zealots for example). Just assume it's going to be pirated (it already is!) and make it easy for those of us who want to pay for it to get it.

That's pretty bigoted and low... especially if you consider the fact that Sarah Palin has 4,298,489 "likes" on Facebook. How many do you have? Who do you think would be more likely to get "euthanized" if that was the (admittedly arbitrary) basis?

I wouldn't go around suggesting that approach if I were you...

I don't know enough about the situation in Palestine, or what kinds of laws are imposed from outside there, but just hypothetically, I wonder: what if they renounced all initiation of violence altogether, and just dropped the push to set up their own state? What if, instead they declared their territories to be "state-free" and "tax free havens?" Maybe they could open some casinos a la Native Americans; and provide some tax-free banking; let tech giants set up tax-free research centers there without all of the immigration restrictions that seem to impose so many unnecessary challenges.. And what if, instead of waging war or attacking Israel, they simply used any military capabilities they had to set up private security firms, and secure their banking system, maybe provide some safe gold depositories? In a generation or two, the Israelis would see that they are the ones living in a prison/tax farm, not the Palestinians. I wonder if they could get away with it...


It's interesting to me how some folks tend to (more or less) "take sides" in defense of states (or would-be states) in conflicts like this one. As if states somehow had "rights" or as if states somehow represented "the people" within each state. That is simply, prima facie, false: For one thing, I think armed conflict on any sort of large scale inflicts violence against innocent parties on both sides; who, in their own rights, have reason to see the other side's violent acts as aggression (or at least as material threats to their human rights).

So I certainly agree that Israelis have a right not to have rockets coming at them, but it also seems to me that individual Palestinians have a right not to be collateral damage in Israel's bombings. Surely the hundreds who've lost family in Gaza have reason to be angry at Hamas, but you could see why they too would want to defend themselves.

The logic of war often leads to a situation where if you can defend one side fighting, you have to see why the other side would fight as well. And so we can condemn both sides, or sympathize with the innocent victims of both sides, but I don't see any simple formulation that shows why people who happen to live on one side of an arbitrary line have more of a "right" to respond violently to attacks that threaten their lives than the other side has.

The United States commits many forms of aggression quite frequently. In revenge, terrorists murdered innocent Americans on 9/11. Those Americans had a right not to be attacked and as Americans, we have a right to defend ourselves. But if tactics our government employs hurt third parties, doesn't it seem that the logic of collective self defense could easily be used to justify perpetual war?

None of what I say relies on any assumption that Hamas is any less criminal than the Israeli state. Even if it's much more criminal than the Israeli state, it seems to me that collective defense = perpetual war, because of the innocents on both sides who seem to have no way of striking against belligerents without violence that itself puts innocent people in harm's way.

@lucky760

Showing compassion is a choice. I don't doubt for a second that a majority of people in the world agree with your viewpoint the guy in the video doesn't deserve to be shown compassion because a) he was engaging in a crime and b) his injuries are a direct result of the actions he took.

And that's specifically why I responded to your post and the point I've been trying to make throughout this conversation: choosing not to have compassion for fellow human beings--making arbitrary decisions about who deserves and does not deserve compassion--leads exactly to the kind of mess you now see in Gaza, Syria, the Ukraine, and the U.S. prison system (John Oliver's vid explains clearly that the situation has gotten so bad because it's easy for people not to care about convicted criminals).

Yes, you are right about the Gaza vid--the Israelis want revenge. They want revenge because they no longer look at Gazans as humans worthy of compassion but as "the other," an enemy that must be conquered. Again, arbitrarily choosing who to have and not to have compassion for gives us exactly the world we have now--a world where people can cheer the bombing of civilians.

Ghandi once said be the change in the world you want to see--and followed through in a way that changed not just India's future but that of the world (with his effect on the Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., on Mandela's movement to abolish apartheid in South African, etc.). I have no idea how you imagined up I was proposing compassion re-education camps. I'm simply pointing out to you and anyone else who cares to read that you have a choice. You can choose to believe and act the same as we as a species always have (and get in return the world we currently have) or you can choose to try to move beyond our genetic and environmental predispositions and work towards a potentially better world.

Then again, you've already said you'd call an ambulance and run over to help the guy in the vid if you saw this happen, so I think it's safe to say you do feel some compassion for the guy even if you think what he did was stupid and irresponsible. Your initial posts made it sound like you didn't care at all, which is partly what led me to respond because frankly I didn't really believe that--and I'm glad I was right about that at least even if I'm completely wrong about humanity as you suggest.

Saw in the news the Supreme Court upheld the right to restrict cover (5:4), for "closely-held" corporations based on a 1993 law that limited the ability to restrict religious freedoms.

I kind of see the logic of saying that if non-profits corporations can already avoid providing it (which seems to be the case), then for profit corporations should have the same rights. But then I don't see why non-profits should have had the right to deny it either.

Either way though, I agree with John Oliver's bit. Plenty of people would have liked to veto funding for the Iraq war but obviously never had the option. To say that religious objections are specifically excluded is highly arbitrary. No employees who receive a salary should be excluded.

The "closely-held" provision is also highly arbitrary, almost implying that the court doesn't like the law and are trying to limit it's impact. Maybe it was some kind of compromise to get a majority. Either way, I imagine the notion of "closely-held" will be stretched as loosely as possible in practice.

http://time.com/2940577/supreme-court-hobby-lobby-contraception-obamacare/

@ShakaUVM

By that logic, what would make sense is a lower standard of oversight, not none. Scientific studies are not a realistic source of guidance unless you are an expert in the field. Regulatory agencies such as the FDA, should and do exist for the purpose of informing the average consumer. If they are not working they need to be fixed, not circumvented.

If both Zoloft and Wort have discernible and scientifically significant benefits against depression, then medical decisions shouldn't be made by a seemingly arbitrary price classification into pharmaceuticals or alternative supplements.

The problem is, as with any multi billion dollar industry, existing players entrench the status quo. I have no doubt that to some extent existing pharmaceuticals companies benefit from the high barriers to entry the FDA has imposed in being able to deter competition from new starts.

Similarly, they would fight tooth and nail any new and uncertain supplement oversight because of the potential impact on their existing lines of revenue. But purely relying on merit, these are all terrible justifications.

Ok. Women want to be perceived as soft (they do? - I'd be careful with that generalisation, your straying into damsel territory there) and feminine (Surprise! ...but what is feminine? - is it soft and pink or something else?). And who doesn't want to be seen as competent and why should it be seen as a masculine trait?

Wait, Let me guess the guys. Do most guys want to be perceived as..masculine...and...*insert positive gender role stereotype here!*.

Oh well, I was close I guess.

So liek. Yes. Your average guy or gal wants to fit into their associated gender role, or gender aesthetic if you like. But it seems to me there is sort of an element of carts before horses here. Are those gender aesthetics a preexisting difference between the sexes or is it an arbitrary divider created by our society through cynical marketing campaigns that have exploited our desire to "belong" to make more money?

Aside from that, what exactly makes a fragrance "tough" or "competent"? I've never thought to describe a smell as competent in all my life. It's all as arbitrary as pink for girls, blue for boys and...pens for women.

You have completely misunderstood the point and have mistaken the method for interpreting data with the data itself. Yes, of course context matters, but none of your examples presents an exception to rationalism (PDF) in any way. Using reason does not pre-determine the conclusion prior to the interpretation of the data. Just the opposite, rational deductive reasoning enables one to interpret the data from an unbiased position, in contrast to the hermeneutics which you seem to be employing. Without a consistent position based on unchanging principles, the data is either consciously or unconsciously filtered through your a prior "preference" or bias in arbitrary and/or indefensible (rationally-speaking) ways.

And IP is no exception (PDF).