@Ickster
"That we're equating that with something like gay people being refused service because of who they are says a lot about how skewed our perception of balance is."

This is the fundamental point. I DON'T equate the two at all.

But as soon as we open this door, we have to deal with the permutations of it.

Let's say that for the sake of argument, gender identity and sexual orientation are now protected classes (legally, they're not, but let's assume they are).

Ok, you can't discriminate against someone for being LGBTQ. Great, that is obviously correct.

But we're making the argument here that you CAN discriminate against someone based on their political affiliation. Would you be ok with someone refusing service to Obama? Hillary? Bernie? What about an employer in a Republican town who finds out their employee is a prominent local democrat?

I get the argument and honestly, I agree with most of what you've said. If any of Trump's cronies had shown up in my (completely imaginary) restaurant, I'd probably have turfed them out with a lot less civility than SHS was shown.

But I'm just not sure that the world following my example is a good idea....

Mostly the trouble depends on where you work and how publicly you make your statement. I'd mostly get called a racist, but working for a partially publicly funded place if I was vocal enough losing your job or being told to apologise and be quiet are real possibilities.

The not allowed to talk about it applies much more heavily to anyone in the media. A recent example would be an aboriginal man that was recently shot by a white farmer. The narrative on the national CBC media made a big deal about rampant racism in the region against aboriginals. In their coverage of local opinion it was even more one sided, as they described two sides, the grieving family of the deceased and their supporters, and then the racists who sided with the farmer because they hated aboriginal people. They very slowly, reluctantly and buried deep under a lot of disclaimers released more information on the case.

The young man that was killed was in a truck with 4 of his friends, and their story was that they got a flat tire and pulled into the yard to seek help with repairs. The CBC ran that much right away. They were much more reluctant to include that the RCMP had been called BEFORE the truck got onto that farm because they had been trying to steal a truck from a neighbouring farm already beforehand. It wasn't until during the trial that even more came out, and CBC again reluctantly included details from the friends that where with the victim. All the occupants of the vehicle had been drinking very heavily all afternoon. They admitted to 'checking cars' at the earlier neighbouring farm. They admitted to using the butt end of a rifle to try and break the windows of the truck at the neighbouring farm, but the stock broke off the gun. It was found at the neighbouring farm by police. Upon arriving at the final farm, they admitted trying to start up an ATV and going through and unlocked vehicle there as well, but disagreed on who was doing which. The trial even included text messages from the night before wondering if one of the friends would be able to "go on missions" tomorrow because they were hiding from police after a liquor store robbery. The farmer also mentioned being scared about what could happen the day of the shooting because he thought back to a story he'd been told about 2 farmers being killed on their yards a few years before he'd moved into the area. Only 1 media outlet in the country, and in 1 article checked out that the identity of one of those killers back then turned out to be the victims uncle. I had to go back looking for the original article from when those murders took place to be sure that the current news article wasn't just sensationalising things.

Now of course none of that means you want to see somebody getting killed over property theft. None of that means racism in any way shape or form is justified. However, when there was a rampant run of rural crime across the area and farmers were getting more and more fed up and nervous about their safety something bad was eventually going to happen. It's a tragedy, but our media was absolutely terrified of covering the full story because listing the facts I just laid out is considered racist. Your blaming the victim. My listing of the above facts is not supposed to be done without including many times more explanations and reasons that this was the white man's fault.

Ultimately, the absolute failure to talk openly about things in Canada is getting people killed. We absolutely need to be clear that stealing doesn't deserve a death penalty. We ALSO need to tell a group of young adults that were going farm to farm, with a loaded rifle, raging drunk, stealing and breaking into vehicles that doing that was a BAD idea and one of the reasons is that doing so might get you shot by someone that doesn't know if your going to hurt them or not. I really believe if the kids had been white that would have been the narrative, but because of race it wasn't. It just makes things worse and inspires more risky and dangerous decisions from people in the future and more people will continue to get hurt.

As an artist who is always dealing with my own artistic identity, I found that particularly moving. Thank you.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Vox, Why, many, sitcoms, look, identical, same, similiar, TV, television, Amercian, USA, US' to 'Vox, TV, sitcom, karl freund, studio, lighting, cinematography' - edited by Eklek

Interesting, but his whole premise is "the purpose of a song is to be performed," and that's a rather subjective, and I'd argue invalid, statement.

My natural reaction to all of this is: "So what?"

The purpose of a song isn't to be performed live, it's to make money through entertaining, and the purpose of performing live isn't to sing identically to a recording, but to make money through entertaining.

She exemplifies the problem we have with identity politics: it's important to her that she is black and queer (since she repeatedly references that). How does that qualify her, above and beyond any other (non-black/queer/ trans/ Am. Indian/Hispanic) candidate to keep the buses running, the property taxes collected, the garbage service operational, the homeless shelters staffed, etc.? I don't care about her ethnicity or gender preference when I am deciding on who to vote for - and how she can apparently believe that I should, is a complete mystery to me.

One of Jordan Peterson's claims, that the left has settled into higher ed and wants to shutdown debate in favor of indoctrination, is openly on display in the video. All 3 staff from Wilfrid Laurier state it as contrary to the university environment to present a debate on use of pronouns, or to allow the subject to be debated, save that student's are FIRST taught and thoroughly prepared to know which side of the debate is right before hand.

One of them even dismisses Peterson's claim that you can be convicted for failing to use the pronouns requested by others as baseless and contrary to all evidence. Mean while the Ontario human rights tribunal clearly states that is exactly the case. link below.

If you are find with higher education abandoning reasoned debate in favor of indoctrination then you don't need to care. Of course, here in Canada we aren't facing the same risk you American's are of finding the tables turning and the indoctrination landing in the hands of tea party or trump types.

Still, keeping free speech and reasoned debate a cornerstone of education is extremely important to maintaining a free society in my opinion and the video is a window into dark corners hell bent on shutting that down.

http://www.ohrc.on.ca/en/questions-and-answers-about-gender-identity-and-pronouns

@newtboy:
Gender, nope, you can totally choose that now.

If we must play semantics, sex then. Human beings are born with either a penis or vagina. Same as humans are born with 5 fingers and toes. In extremely rare circumstances humans sometimes have more or less fingers and toes than that, but we aren't being hateful towards those individuals by generally observing that humans have five fingers and toes. Similarly, hermaphroditus happens too, but saying humans are born with either a penis or vagina isn't a hateful statement against people.

As for gender being something different than sex, if you define it that way, than gender is nothing but a set of social expectations. Who cares what social norms and expectations people are or aren't drawn to and abide by?

Race, many people change their racial identity. My DNA and my skin colour don't change no matter how loudly I protest and how many like minded people I get to affirm me.

Ethnicity, people pass as ethnic groups they weren't born into Not looking like your ancestors enough to pass as someone else still doesn't change your parentage. Nobody passing me on the street is liable to be able to identify my Mennonite heritage, but neither can I cease having been born into that cultural heritage.

Legal, yes. Culturally accepted, not so much, slavery always had cultural opposition by the non ruling class. Natural, WTF?! Show me an example of pure non human slavery (not harems, not parasites) and I'll discuss it.

Granted, I don't know exactly how they measured, but his gene expression is what they measured, not his pure DNA. This goes to my point, that environment determines how your DNA is expressed, so twin studies are flawed from the onset by thinking they begin identical, they don't. They don't even start with identical DNA, just close.

"Genes and the environment", but not pure gene study....at least not like people think. People think twins are carbon copies, so one can be a control to study effects of what they're studying. That's not quite right. Certainly they are useful in genetic studies, but not that way. From before birth, they diverge in how nearly identical DNA is expressed. They might be good for finding what genes/traits need closer scrutiny, but only with large samples.

Grounds for individuals to (privately) discriminate, perhaps, but not (public) businesses....at least not in America. Our national identity is a melting pot of cultures, intolerance for the different is antithetical to that idea.


Gender, nope, you can totally choose that now.
Race, many people change their racial identity...Rachael Dolizal comes to mind....as does the term "passing".
Ethnicity, people pass as ethnic groups they weren't born into, sometimes unknowingly, daily.....again, Dolizal springs to mind.

So, I'll argue that all you mentioned for all intents and purposes are today often the result of free will and not beyond the control of every individual, but a full grasp of brain chemistry and design and well understood methods to change them are well beyond our current knowledge, so their behaviors and actions are, in part, out of their control and not the result of free will but of brain construction.....now what?

@newtboy

"Discriminating against people for their legal, culturally accepted, natural behavior makes the person doing the discriminating an asshole. "

Slavery also exists in nature, so it's natural, and once upon a time it was legal and culturally accepted. Discriminating against slave owners though, even back than, is contrary to your claim, quite noble.

"The space study with twins showed that in under a year their genes permanently diverged a full 7%"

You gotta be careful there exactly what is being measured, they did not find that fully 7% of his DNA changed and now was that different. Depending what you measure people also claim that human and chimp DNA only differs by less than 2%...


"Twins aren't genetically identical, even at birth. ...That makes twin studies a piss poor method of gene study."

If you read your own linked article it states:
Twins share the same genes but their environments become more different as they age. This unique aspect of twins makes them an excellent model for understanding how genes and the environment contribute to certain traits, especially complex behaviors and diseases.

If you bother to read the list of peer reviewed articles I linked, they are comparing mono-zygotic twins to di-zygotic twins. The very basic and largely accepted theory being that if a trait has a genetic component, 1000 twins split from the same zygote should share the trait more often than di-zygotic twins.

My argument though really doesn't care much though. I simply argue that beliefs, choices and behaviours are the result of free will and grounds to judge(discriminate) for and against those you deem good or bad, hurtful or harmful. Similarly, gender, race and ethnicity being things that are in zero way the result of free will and beyond the control of an individual and NOT grounds to judge(discriminate) for or against.

Twins aren't genetically identical, even at birth. They begin separating from each other genetically when the zygote splits. Environmental factors determine how genes are expressed, and those factors are not identical. That makes twin studies a piss poor method of gene study. All it can tell you is how much the environment might effect their expression over time, and they aren't very good at even that.
http://learn.genetics.utah.edu/content/epigenetics/twins/

Now that genetic testing is cheap, we're finding out most identical twins aren't identical at all. Proper gene testing doesn't assume twins are identical clones for life, it actually disproved that hypothesis. The space study with twins showed that in under a year their genes permanently diverged a full 7% (with a larger temporary change initially that lowered as they returned to similar environments).
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-twins-study-confirms-preliminary-findings


I feel that people often misuse mistaken assumptions to validate their prejudices. If the science isn't clear and validated, using it against others is improper in the extreme.

Discriminating against people for their legal, culturally accepted, natural behavior makes the person doing the discriminating an asshole. Homosexuality is quite present in nature, is now culturally accepted in western cultures, and is legal. Tolerance is a learned behavior I wish was taught better, especially by churches.

"A twin study of self-reported psychopathic personality traits"
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886902001848

Perhaps the above is more to the point. Similar twin study showing identical twins having similarly significant genetic component to psychopathy as the prior studies show for sexual orientation.

Should we be similarly upset at people assigning morality to psychopathic behaviours?

"Genetic and Environmental Influences on Religious Interests, Attitudes, and Values: A Study of Twins Reared Apart and Together"
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40062599?seq=3#page_scan_tab_contents

Religiosity shows the same thing, strong correlations for identical twins, raised apart from one another, and much weaker correlations for non-identical twins also raised apart.

If Tom Cruise claims his belief in Scientology is a birth right and how dare we judge him, is he really backed by the science?

Where I am coming from, is insisting that for all the factors involved in human decision and behaviours, I still want to conduct ourselves as though free will exists.

More importantly, the freedom to discriminate against people based upon their behaviours must be defended as strongly as the right to discriminate based upon purely in born, unchangeable attributes like race, gender and ethnicity must be opposed.

As promised, the most promising results when polling google scholar:

"Genetic and Environmental Influences on Sexual Orientation and Its Correlates in an Australian Twin Sample"

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/J_Bailey2/publication/12572213_Genetics_and_Environmental_Influences_on_Sexual_Orientation_and_Its_Correlates_in_
an_Australian_Twin_Sample/links/0deec518bc0435c0cd000000.pdf

Probably one of the better studies, it breaks down orientation to a scale versus straight binary, though the results are then statistical correlations and my stats classes are too long ago for me to work that back into something resembling my claims above.

"Sexual Orientation in a U.S. National Sample
of Twin and Nontwin Sibling Pairs"
http://ioa126.medsch.wisc.edu/findings/pdfs/47.pdf

19 identical twins in the study with at least one twin with non-hetro orientation, within those 19 pairs, 6 showed concordance. So 6 of 19 identical twins sharing orientation, 13 of 19 not. This supports my statement above that in studies identical twins more often than not don't share homosexual orientation. This study also lists the statistical correlation of this result as 0.68, the previous studies statistical correlation was lower at 0.51(1.0 would be perfect correlation). If I'm reading the statistics remotely right, the above study then is similarly in keeping with my statement.

"Homosexual Orientation in Twins: A Report on 61 Pairs and Three Triplet Sets"
http://hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/1961to1999/1993-homosexual-orientation-in-twins.html

Smaller sample size and different polling methodology, specifically sought out respondents of non hetro orientation. Shows a higher correlation, 25 of 38 identical twins being concordant. That's 66% concordance so opposite of my claim that more often than not they are discordant.


Running out of time here to post results. If you keep digging though it's more of the same, identical twins don't come close to showing 100% correlation, highest study of the samples I've pulled is 66%, and it's by far the highest. This is in contrast to race and gender, where you fully expect 100/100 identical twins to match.

, I said it was more controversial.

I dare say even agreeing that we don't solely choose our sexual interests, when it comes to our actions I insist we treat those as the result of free will, aka choice.

When I'm not typing from a 4in screen I can pull up the references, but the peer reviewed studies on genetics hardly illustrate that sexual orientation and identity are dominated by it. Twins studies do show that identical twins more often share orientation than non-identical, which gives a correlation to genetics. However, I'll pull up the studies but last I reviewed them, more than half the identical twins in the studies did NOT share the same orientation. That is an arguably compelling indicator that genetics does not solely determine orientation.

Other twin studies comparing other behaviours like religion show a similar pattern. Studies with twins on violent and aggressive behaviour show an even stronger "genetic" component than the orientation studies, and nobody has any qualms about being politically incorrect declaring that violence is a choice and not a birth attribute...