While I respect many of them, I don't take assertions like that for granted without evidence that it's true, not just an assumption. The pew research didn't have a study about religious extremists correlating with insanity in some religions and not others....I looked, but it did have an answer to your question of why Arab Muslims are more prone to extremism, severe lack of educational oportunity.

No, all religions are not equal, but they share certain traits and are nearly all equally susceptible to abuse in the right circumstances.

It's also dishonest to claim only one culture still does those things. Every single one was done by average everyday Christians in America in my lifetime, and are just an okeydoke from someone in authority away from returning to being acceptable in many places.

Edit: I'm not one of those that think everyone is good, the opposite, I think human nature is to be evil if you think you'll get away with it, and to be decent people we must consciously fight that instinct.

I took fencing in college, and had some preconceived ideas about men probably being better at it on average due to higher strength on average.

At least for foil fencing, that turned out to be quite wrong. With foils, strength is far less important than dexterity and footwork skill, which in my class the girls tended to be noticeably better at.

...However, aggressiveness / competitiveness / "killer instinct" was in many ways more important than either strength OR dexterity, and the males tended to exhibit those qualities far more than the females in my class. So even though the women were more technically proficient, the men tended to win matches at a much higher rate.

I found that interesting. Can't say that my experiences would speak to any sort of universal trend, but it was the clear trend in my beginner's level course.

I've always had a theory that the way you drive reveals something about your social instincts. Seeing the way Russians drive really makes me concerned for their society.

I'm so angry this man is not my president elect right now.

Good work douchebags. You thought you were so clever with your fucked up voting strategies, bitching about "lesser of two evil" choices, refusing to vote and taking a stand against...whatever the fuck you thought you were doing. Now we have a thin skinned, narcissistic, ignorant, man-child for our president.

Stop trying to rationalize this. This is not a voter revolt, this is not a paradigm shift in politics, this is not Hillary Clinton's fault or Debbie Wasserman Schultz's doing; this is the result of the masses falling for decades of misinformation combined with an emotional appeal to our worst instincts by a demagogue. You fell for it while you patted yourself on the back for being so much smarter than everyone else. Now we're fucked.

So grow the fuck up and do something to fix this.

Pretty good for a first go. I would fell down the hole at the end, but he instinctively went over. Well done hamster!

Isn't it so much more fun to actually exchange information and points of view, rather than getting snotty? I love it.

Maybe we are talking a bit at cross purposes. (Like, that has never happened before on teh intertubes, right?)

I try not to "re-edit" or "re-imagine" videos. I'm sure I do it -- I often do things that I later complain that other people do. This comment goes back more to your first response to me, however it applies to this comment, too. The idea that the video would be better if it this'd, or that'd, or it fails to do this other thing that it wasn't even trying to do. The concept of being conscious of "the bigger picture" is what I am addressing here.

However, isn't it just YOUR vision of what the bigger picture is that you say is missing? Because for me, I see a bigger picture being addressed quite nicely -- the vision that the video maker set out to address.

I wonder if the nebulous nature of your instinctive dislike to this video is indeed EXACTLY what the video maker was setting out to illuminate? Or rather, decided to be not obsequious to? Like women have been taught to be obsequious for eons?

I notice that you are sure that your difficult-to-describe instinctive reactions are "correct." What if it is actually your own internalized and unexamined sexism? I know you say thunderfoot bugs you, too. I also know that all my impassioned information about how women across cultures and time are expected to "tone it down" wasn't addressed in your response to me.

That is the elephant in the room here, as far as I am concerned. Sure, "condescension" is gender neutral. The whole video, though, is about sexism and the unconscious ways that it leaks out. I don't see you addressing that in your response -- except maybe, MAYBE, it is this nebulous and difficult thing you are struggling to understand and maybe, MAYBE, it needs to be examined and understood.

So maybe look at your feelings through that prism?

I say this as someone who has their own internalized sexism (towards men and women both) that I am constantly trying to identify and own and uproot. Racism, too. I so want to be the person who, like Stephen Colbert of old, who doesn't see race. And yet I do and I am mortified by it and I try to push through that lizard brain instinct and the training of my youth.

Something to think about maybe?

Or not. Maybe it just is as simple as you don't like the humor in the video, and I do. There are differences in taste, after all.

I suspect, though, that it is much more complex than that -- as you said, "maybe I'm going into it with the notion that I'm going to be offended anyway."

i am just going to add to the opinions and perspectives that @MilkmanDan ,@ChaosEngine ,@dannym3141 and especially @newtboy who i agree with so clearly that i swear we are related.

since many dynamics have already been covered, i.e:police culture,racism,incompetence etc etc.

i shall offer a historical perspective in the ways of the power dynamic.

while this is a power vs powerlessness dynamic dealing with agents of the state,it helps to understand just how we got to this point,and it is NOT the first time we have been here.

see:labor movement of the 30's and the labor strikes,and the response from not only the business community but our own government.

see: the civil rights movement and segregation,and how demagouges used political power to divide by way of racism,and then used police to intimidate,beat and imprison.

there are many MANY examples here in america where the police have been used to suppress and oppress a people or community for less than altruistic reasons,and most certainly not aligning with the ideology we were taught in school the function of police.nevermind the syrupy sweet,idealized picture shoved down our throats since an early age.

so we see on our facebooks,our twitters and/or whatever social media you prefer,that black lives matter...and the counter point,that NO..ALL lives matter.

now this would make sense in a world that never took history into account,or a growing cultural norm of violence and oppression that had been slowly seeping into poor communities (mainly black and latino).

oh wait..
that's right.
social media pundits NEVER fucking consider any of those factors,because just like bill o'reilly,those are pesky nuances and context conflict with their own narrow narrative.

but let us consider them and how they may possibly be a major driving factor in americas current climate.

let us take ferguson as an example,that is a good place to start.
and let us go back to 2008,where we can see the boiling begin to take place in this extremely impoverished community which was already struggling.

the population is a black majority,poor to working poor.home ownership is low,food stamp recipients are high and the future is pretty bleak.

in 2008 ferguson received approximately 18% of it's total fiscal revenue from misdemeanor infractions i.e:traffic,parking,moving violations.small time stuff.basic fines for small infractions.in 2008 that number jumped to 66%.

why?
what happened?
what changed?

well the comptroller of ferguson (and greater st louis),along with HUNDREDS of other smaller municipalities across the country,had bought the rotten fish that wall street was selling in the form of bullshit derivatives.

now wall street and the big banks got their tax payer bailout,but towns like ferguson did not.they lost millions,sometimes billions.this meant pensions were either reduced or outright denied,because there was NO money!

but a town still has to pay police.
fire fighters and school teachers,
clerks and judges,
keep the roads paved and the street lights working.

so what is a local government to do?
can't tax the working class who own homes.you already jacked their property tax to the roof.
can't tax the local business,you already squeeze them as well.
how about those non-property owning people in ferguson?
they need to pay up as well,and let's use the police force to relinquish them of the paltry money they don't have.

to the tune of 66% of all of fergusons revenue.
that is insanity.

so what if you live in ferguson?
chances are you are black,and either poor or working poor.

you make,if you are lucky,20 grand a year and by one man's testimony he paid over 2,000 in traffic tickets in one year.the majority of americans dont see those kind of numbers their entire lifetime.

and what if you began to realize that it was not just you.that almost every person you know or talked to had similar stories.

would you begin to feel a tad bit targeted?

what if the city of ferguson started to become very creative with not only their rules but how they enforced those rules?

what if every year the fines went up?
not remained the same,but actually UP? every year.

what if,as a community people began to actually fear the police? to experience anxiety just by the sight of a patrol car,even though they were not engaging in anything illegal? and who knows...maybe there is some new ordinance on the books that you are unaware of?

would you become paranoid and suspicious of law enforcement?

and then..what if....you started losing friends to cops.people you grew up with being shot in the street,and every time the mayor comes out and calls it a "justifiable killing".

would that make you feel any better?
any less paranoid or anxious?

there was ONE police shooting in ten years and then..as if by magic ..(which is how the media seems to always portray this..shocking news..at 11)..you lose 5 friends in a year.all to cops..all "justifiable".

would you begin to think there was a conspiracy?
targeting you and your neighbors?

i BET you would.
i know i would.

now lets look at the cops.

they are just a tool.
an instrument for the state to uphold the law and write citations for infractions.they dont MAKE the laws,nor the infractions,not even the fines.

they just do what they are told.

and they are told to go into these poor and working poor neighborhoods and write tickets,a LOT of tickets.

do you really think they are unaware of the growing hostility towards them? the looks of disgust,fear and apprehension?

but...this is their job,and they do what they are told.

they see.
they know.
they are aware of the growing hatred towards them,and this makes them anxious..and defensive..and in some horrible,tragic cases...trigger happy.

a natural and normal response to heightened stimuli in the face of great uncertainty.

so they react impulsively and out of fear in a way that ten years ago would have been unheard of.

they think themselves good cops.
they do a good job.
they do what they are told.
and the people hate them for it.
so they respond instinctively and with poor judgement.

we..as citizens,respond with disgust and indignation when a cop abuses his/her authority.we see this as a major moral breach in the citizen/cop relationship,because we feel as agents of the law they should be held to a higher standard than the rest of us...and rightly so,but when you put a human being in a tense and dangerous situation,not of their making,they will fail at some point to react correctly and with sound judgement.

they SHOULD be held accountable,but so should the city council members and the mayor and all the local representatives who created this toxic climate in the first place.

the lesson to be learned here is that nothing is a binary situation when people are concerned.

so when black lives matter protestors address people to make them aware of the situation,this is what they are talking about.the police killing are only a last stage manifestation of a situation that began in 2008 on wall street.

and we need to be aware,because right now it is the predominantly black communities,but soon coming to a neighborhood near YOU.

the poor and working poor have become expendable.no longer relevant to the system.which is why police shootings are being handled the way they are.our value is ever increasingly being judged on how well we can feed the system.

until this disparity is addressed there will continue to be police shootings.people will die and there will be no indictments.

because police do what they are told.

it is up to us to make policy makers accountable for their actions,and in doing so address a toxic climate that both the poor,working poor and cops alike have to swim in.

stop forcing cops to write tickets to fund a city that lost it's savings due to fuckhead bankers.

this blood..all of it..is on those bankers hands.

1. I *AM* an LGBTQ person, I don't speak for them, but I am one voice.
I tend to avoid harassing people.

2. No.

3. a) Both. They aren't mutually exclusive. I want women to be equal and I want legal protections in place to maintain this. This is not secret information.
b) They do.

4. Question 3b) suggests women should be responsible for their safety. Question 4 seems to criticize the notion of being responsible for your own safety. Glad to see unified thought in this. The answer is I expected random bouts of mockery, judgement, and violence. You know, the other 95% of my life.

5. Because shitting on a group that seeks to change culture to react similarly to loss of black life as it does for white lives, while pointing out where society fails to meet this standard is pretty charactersticly racist.
Also I don't say that "Kill all white people" is not racist.

6. Yes. Did you know that the permanence of objects, the transmission of ideas and culture and systems of law are based on events in the past? That by studying history we can understand how humans work in a unique way, that knowing that say, there was a WWI may help us understand the conditions under which WWII occurred and that this knowledge may help us decide what to do in the aftermath of WWII to avoid a recurrence?
That if a group has historically had problems, many of those problems have probably been inherited along with consequences of the problems (such as poverty, strongly inherited social trait). Yes. Linear time,human affairs, culture. They are all things that exist.

7. Yes, I have many examples of people doing this. Mostly this is due to short lifespan. But there are many manchildren in our culture, who seem to think that other people asserting boundaries is immature.

8. There are programs designed to help boost male education dropout rate. If you 'fight' for 'improvements in the fairness of social order ' to help achieve this, you are a Social Justice Warrior, and so you could just have asked yourself.
Also, American bias? Pretty sure this is not a global stat...

9. Because one focusses on correcting the inequalities between the sexes and was born at a time when women didn't have proper property rights, voting rights etc etc, and so it was primarily focussed on uplifting women and so the name 'feminism'. Egalitarianism on the other hand, is the general pursuit. Many feminists are egalitarian, but not all. Hence different words. English, motherfucker....

10. Nothing, as I am not.

11. No, my grandparents were being enslaved in eastern Europe by the far left and right (but more the right, let's be honest).

Seriously though, I don't remember the liberal protests of "Not all ISIS".

12. Ingroup outgroup hatred and distrust is a universal human trait. Race seems to provoke instinctive group psychology in humans, presumably from evolving in racially separate groups.

13. The phrase is intended to deflate 'Black Lives Matter' whose point is that society seems to disagree, in practice, with this. There's only one realistic motivation to undermining the attempts to equalize how the lives of different races are treated socially.
It's also designed to be perfectly innocuous outside of this context so that white people can totally believe they aren't being dicks by saying it.

14. My social justice fighting is almost always done in secret. I hate the limelight, and I hate endlessly seeking credit for doing the right thing. So I try to keep it to a minimum while also raising consciousness about issues where I can.
Hey wait, did you fall for the bias that the big public figures are representative in all ways of the group? HAHAHAHA! Noob.
Wait, did a man voicing a cartoon kangaroo wearing an Islamic headdress, superimposed on video footage of a woman in a gym grinding her hips tell me to stop trying show off how awesome I am and and to get real?

15. No, they are both not capable of giving consent. Sounds like you have had a bitter experience. Sorry to hear that.

16. I spent two decades trying to change myself. I tortured myself into a deep suicidal insanity. When I stopped that, and when society had changed in response to my and others plights being publicised sympathetically I felt happy and comfortable with myself.
You would prefer millions in silent minorities living through personal hells if the alternative means you have to learn better manners? What a dick.

17. Sure. It's also OK if you say 'nigga' in the context of asking this question. But I'm white and English. You should ask some black Americans if your usage causes unintended messages to be sent. I'd certainly avoid placing joyful emphasis, especially through increased volume, on the word.

18. Ah, you've confused a mixture of ideas and notions within a group as a contradiction of group idealogy. Whoops. I don't understand gender identity. I get gender, but I never felt membership in any group. That's how I feel, and have since the 1990s. The internet has allowed disparate and rare individuals to form groups, and some of these groups are people with different opinions about how they feel about gender and they are very excited to meet people other people with idiosyncratic views as they had previously been alone with their eccentric perspective.

19. If white men are too privileged then the society is not my notion of equal.

20. After rejecting the premise as nonsensical. In as much as I want rules to govern social interactions that take into consideration the diversity of humanity as best as possible, I recognize those same rules will govern my behaviour.

21. Women can choose how to present themselves. Video Game creators choose how to present women in their art. I can suggest that the art routinely portrays women as helpless sex devices, while supporting women who wish to do so for themselves.

22. You DO that? I've never even had the notion. I just sort of listen and digest and try to see if gaps can reasonably be filled with pre-existent knowledge or logical inferrences and then I compare and contrast that with my own differring opinion and I consider why someone might have come to their ideas. Assuming they aren't stupid I try to understand as best I can and present to them my perspective from their perspective. I don't sing, or plug in headphones or have an imaginary rock concert.

23. I have done no such thing. Look, here I am listening to you. You have all been asking questions that have easy answers to if you looked outside your bubble of fighting a handful of twitter and youtube users thinking these people represent the entirety of things and seeking only to destroy them with your arguments rather than understanding the ideas themselves.

24. Reverse Racism is where white guys are systematically (and often deliberately) disadvantaged - such as the complaints against Affirmative Action. I'm sure your buddies can fill you in on the details. The liberal SJWs you hate tend to roll their eyes when they hear it too. Strange you should ask.

25. No. I've never seen the list. I just use whatever pronouns people feel comfortable with. Typically I only need to know three to get by in life, same as most other English speakers.

26. I'm the audience motherfucker, and so are you. That's how it works.

27. I don't do those things, but yes, I have considered the notion of concept saturation in discourse. Have you considered the idea that people vary in their identification of problems, based on a number of factors. Some people are trigger happy and this may be a legitimate problem. Since you are aware of this, you also have a duty to try to overcome the saturation biases.
Similarly, if you keep using the word 'fucking', motherfucker, you'll find it loses its impact quite quickly. See this post motherfucker. Probably why you needed to add the crash zoom for impact. You could have achieved more impact with less sarcasm and and a more surprising fuck.

@bmacs27

I wondered if that might not be the case.

Counterintuitive indeed.

All my instincts shout to do something different. Further proof, not that I needed it, that I need to stay the heck off a motorcycle.

Thanks for sharing.

IANAMD. My understanding is that contrary to intuitions, deceleration on a motor cycle is more dangerous than acceleration. Maintaining stability is your primary concern, less so velocity of impact. You also don't want to be overtaken by faster traffic, you'd rather see your threats. My friends who do ride motorcycles tell me they are taught to drive aggressively by default. I don't think braking is your first instinct in tight quarters.

Jay showed once again that he's a real car man by not instinctively putting his hand out the window to try to stop the roll. Many a broken arm has happened that way.

I don't consider the chemical reactions of plants to be the same. I said that 'even' plants have a response to negative stimuli. Animals have instinct, a response coded into their DNA, that allows them to respond to negative stimuli. Does that make them a fully sentient being, capable of self-awareness and logical thought? No, it doesn't.

Do insects have rational thought? Do clams or lobster have rational thought? If your entire goal is to avoid (formerly) living matter that can respond to negative stimuli, then why draw the line at plants? Do you really believe that a sea urchin has more capability of self-awareness than a head of lettuce?

This is the fallacy of logic that lies at the core of vegan ideology. Vegans say "I will eat this item because it doesn't understand pain!" when there are, in fact, many life forms that do not understand pain beyond a stimulus reaction.

Let's be realistic, most of the work our war planes do has collateral damage. We don't simply use them on 'the bad guys', but again that is a simplification to allow you moral latitude.

Non-smokers are no better than smokers, I know since I used to be a smoker. Just because I decided that I no longer wanted to smoke doesn't mean I feel the need to go up to someone smoking and start telling them how much better I am that I quit. Again, I'm not any better of a person than they are, I just chose to do something different. That is one of the things you can't seem to grasp, because you continue to say that morally you are more good than someone who does not practice a vegan lifestyle. You aren't.

As far as the functional capacity for feelings, of course animals feel pain, it is a stimuli that helps in their survival instinct. That instinct is what drives them to avoid pain because it means they might not survive. It doesn't mean that they have the logical thought capacity to relate pain to more than an instinctual response. I am pretty sure that no pig ever felt pain and said to itself, I feel pain therefore I exist as a being, they felt the pain and instinct told them to get away from it. Plants even have stimuli that they will respond to in order to grow or try to avoid damaging forces, but they aren't self-aware. Neither are animals until you get to a certain level of intelligence, like dolphins or great apes.

I grew up in the country, I have seen first hand and used my hands in regards to the butchery you speak of. Never once have I had a pig who had seen another be slaughtered do anything that would give me the belief that they were responding in any other fashion than a "shit, flight time since I might be next" natural instinct that is in all prey animals. Factory farms may not be totally humane, and that should be reformed, but all they are doing in the end is killing prey animals on a much larger scale than I did growing up.

@ahimsa, @transmorpher

You might as well cry out against nature, because if you think humans are barbarous and cruel, nature owns us. Watch a video of a pack of lions eating a wildebeest alive sometime. I don't think they anesthetize it, pretty sure the animal thinks being eaten alive is torture, and I think it qualifies as murderous. This goes on daily, right this minute in fact, and the reason it happens is because there is a portion of the lion's instinct that is designed to like meat.

Chimpanzees will eat meat, sometimes going out of their way to find it and pull it apart alive. They don't need to biologically, but they are coded to.

Vegans avoid meat because humans have managed to reach a point of civilized society which allows us to have lofty moral opinions. I guarantee you however, that if society broke down and you couldn't get your hands on processed food with that special hint of paprika, you would have your hands out for a venison steak or pork hindquarters.

Therein lies the hypocrisy that annoys most of the non-vegans, you guys DO have this faint whiff of "I am superior to you because I don't participate in murder" when the fact is that you would eat meat if you had to. You don't see humor in being lightly made fun of, because it punctures your balloon of superiority.

In any case, the point of this entire thing is that if you choose to be vegan, awesome! Laugh a little if people poke fun at you and don't always try to sound like a stuck up ass if they don't agree with your choices. I think you'll find that more people will quit harboring dislike of you. Quit treating your personal dietary choice as a religion and don't try to convert people to it. If they see you living your life as a vegan and ask about it, then you explain it to them. Don't huff and puff while people eat meat around you and act like it is your job to convert them to the 'true way'. Life will be a lot simpler for you!

I said that if something never exists, it's not possible for it to know it isn't existing. I never said animals don't care if they get killed, they obviously do since every animal has survival instincts and mechanisms. (Actually some philosopher said that, I'm just too lazy to quote him properly lol).

It's the same reason why killing a few billion unconscious cells is called abortion, and why killing a few seconds old baby is called murder.