You got it right, that's the agenda as I see it, make racism seem so outrageous and pervasive that people act....but only white on black racism exists or matters in that agenda. If you have such a biased, racist agenda, it detracts from the message that racism is bad and makes you sound ignorant.
Yeah....he argued once that he believes in racist faucets as a real issue of institutional racism, not a function of physics, even when it was explained scientifically....but I sound ignorant.
And through the filter of that agenda any white vs black interaction that's not the white person kissing ass is obviously pure racial malice and bias, and the only possible explanation is because all white people are overtly racist....and I sound ignorant.
And outright lies are fine with that agenda, including 100% bullshit stories like the one about racist gangs kidnapping a kid that obviously never happened, and dozens of others that are never corrected when debunked...and I sound ignorant.
I've posted dozens and dozens of videos about racism, but I do it because I think it's a real problem not dog poo I get to shove someone's nose in, so I'm careful to not equate bullshit, lies, exaggeration, hyperbole, and other falsehoods with it, because that gives racists ammunition to "prove" racism is dead and only alive in some people's minds and agendas, and a license to ignore true stories of real racism as more of the same. Doing THAT is ignorant and harmful.
That's true no matter what the agenda is, and is especially misguided and ill advised when it's about something important.
*facepalm

There is a generally held belief that consciousness is a mystery of science or a miracle of faith; that consciousness was attained instantly (or granted by god), and that one has either attained self awareness or has not.

I don't believe any of that. I believe like all things in biology, consciousness evolved to maximise a benefit, and occurred gradually, without any magic or mystery. The closest exurb1a gets to that is when he says at 6:28:

"Maybe evolution accidentally made some higher mammals on Earth self-aware because it's better for problem solving or something"

We need to know what other people are thinking and this is the problem that consciousness solves. If a neighbouring tribe enters your territory then predicting whether they come to trade, mate, steal or attack is beneficial to survival.

Initially this may be done through simulation - imagining the future based on past experience. A flood approaching your cave is bad news. Being surrounded by lions is not good. Surrounding a lone bison is dinner. Being charged by a screaming tribe is an upcoming fight.

We could only simulate another person's actions, but we had no experience that allows us to simulate another person's thoughts. You may predict that giving your hungry neighbour a meal may suppress their urge to raid your supplies but you still can't simply open their head and see what they are thinking.

Then for the benefit of cooperation and coordination, we started to talk, and everything changed.

Communication not only allows us to speak our mind, but allows us to model the minds of others. We can gain an understanding of another person's motivations long before they act upon them. The need to simulate another person's thoughts becomes more nuanced and complex. Do they want to trade, or do they want to cheat?

Yet still we cannot look into the minds of others and verify our models of them. If we had access to an actual working brain we could gradually strengthen that model with reference to how an actual brain works, and we happen to have access to such a brain, our own!

If we monitored ourselves then we could validate a general model of thought against real urges, real experiences, real problem solving and real motivations. Once we apply our own selves to a model of thought we become much better at modelling the thoughts of others.

And what better way to render that model than with speech itself? To use all of our existing cognitive skills and simply simulate others sharing their thoughts with us.

At 3:15 exurb1a referenced a famous experiment that showed that we make decisions before we become aware of them. This lends evidence to suppose that our consciousness is not the driver of our thoughts, but a monitor - an interpretation of our subconscious that feeds our model of how people think.

Not everybody is the same. We all have different temperaments. Some of us are less predictable than others, and we tend to avoid such people. Some are more amenable to co-operation, others are stubborn. To understand the temperament of one we must compare them to another. If we are to compare the model of another's mind to our own, and we simulate their mind as speech, then we must also simulate our own mind as speech. Then not only are we conscious, we are self-aware.

Add in a feedback loop of social norms, etiquette, acceptable behaviour, expected behaviour, cooperation and co-dependence, game theory and sustainable societies and this conscious model eventually becomes a lot more nuanced than it first started - allowing for abstract concepts such as empathy, shame, guilt, remorse, resentment, contempt, kinship, friendship, nurture, pride, and love.

Consciousness is magical, but not magic.

Short of looking at the cbc's coverge yourself I'm not sure how I can do much more to represent them. Here's a link to a podcast series they ran:

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/podcasts/boushie/

The victim was Colten Boushie and the farmer was Gerald Stanley, googling that and grabbing the CBC results will show you pretty quickly what their coverage looked like overall.

The case ended with a not-guilty verdict and the farmer is home now. Now, the only witnesses that were sober that day were the farmer and his son. What's worse 3 of the witnesses all changed their stories in court from what they originally told police because they 'didn't want to get into trouble'. With such poor witness testimony and no other evidence of malicious intent on the farmers part it's not much of a surprise that the defence's characterisation of a robbery that led to a tragic and fatal accident was considered credible.

Despite that, Canada's Indigenous services minister responded immediately to the verdict saying;
"We all have more to do to improve justice & fairness for Indigenous Canadians."

And our justice minister tweeted:
"My thoughts are with the family of Colton Boushie tonight. I truly feel your pain and I hear all of your voices. As a country we can and must do better - I am committed to working everyday to ensure justice for all Canadians."

As though the outcome was somehow dictated by race. This victimhood mentality just ignore the underlying real problem of horrible conditions on reserve. The judicial system didn't racially undermine the case, the real problem is a lot more complex than that and is being ignored because it's easier and more popular to ignore the root causes and just echo platitudes about how everything bad that happens down the road is racial too.

The Root has a pretty good article on implicit bias. There is a real problem here and the most damning thing is this quote from a woman who visits that Starbucks every day.

"She said a Starbucks employee told the gentlemen that if they didn’t purchase anything, they would have to leave, but DePino said that there were people in the store who said they hadn’t purchased anything for hours and had no issue."

https://www.theroot.com/starbucks-witness-implicit-bias-exists-and-white-peopl-1825274101

Classic Hollywood over correction, try to fix a decades long problem with women in Hollywood by pumping out a few female centric movies as a mea culpa. Then, if the movies bomb they'll point to that as proof that nobody wants to watch female led movies.
All the while ignoring the fact that male led movies crash and burn all the damn time and nobody goes "it failed because, you know, men". And never addressing the real problems.

Yea I watched-- did you.

It does not address the real problem with gun violence but points to NRA and white people-- Who are not the problem.

Inner city gang bangers are.

1. Mass shootings are <1% of the murder rate, and murder is <1% of the death rate. Getting wound up about mass shootings is as dumb as getting wound up about terrorism. They're both very small in relation to how much people freak out.
2. We already have lots of gun control. Especially in places like California, where the killer bought most of his guns legally and passed a background check.

3. Bump stocks were the real problem. Even the NRA is open to restricting bump stocks. Let's do that.

4. Let's not go overboard with the Australian solution. Australia's murder rate almost halved from 1990 to 2015, and people erroneously give the buyback credit for that, but in that same 25 year time span the US murder rate went down even more (from 9.4 to 4.5 per 100,000) The murder rate went down everywhere in that time frame due to banning leaded gasoline that causes brain damage. Also due to some smaller factors (more abortion, better software for predictive policing).

I had a mother and two cubs move into our back yard for a week.
We had apple trees and they refused to leave until they had stripped all the trees.
The mother always kept the cubs at a distance, but the mother would come right up and stare into our dining room through the glass doors - of course this freaked the dog out.

One option was call wildlife services, and they treat bears like this in one way. Bears that move into housed areas are not afraid of people so they are put down. I decided to wait them out and not call.

In the end we managed to get them to leave by shooting at them with a pellet gun. Of course their hide is too thick for it to harm them. The mother did nothing when we shot at her, but when we decided to shoot at the cubs, (threatening them) the mother screamed at them and then bolted with them, and they didn't come back

Damage done?
No apples, not a real problem.
A scared dog who never wanted to sleep outside again.
Bear Feces - lots of it, cleaned up with shovels, lol.

In those cases, they're being douchey.
I didn't read you to mean a perceived problem meant it wasn't a real problem, now I get you.

Children will be children, but can still be incredibly annoying to some, even if they're well behaved....like a baby on an airplane, it's often not the child's fault. I can support them thinking that all children are annoying (at times), and even communicating it to each other with, say, a knowing wink, but the open, blatant derision is uncalled for.....usually.

That said, there should be child free zones in public spaces imo. Just Tuesday we used our once a year passes to the United Airlines club in SFO to have a nice, quiet place to relax between long flights, and a family came in with two <5 year olds and instantly turned it into the loud, raucous environment everyone there paid to escape. Their children weren't being bad, just being loud children in a quiet place. That's the parent's being douchbags imo. Just as the childless shouldn't insist on no children in public, parents shouldn't insist they must be allowed to go everywhere. Don't take a baby to an adult movie.

they call it perrito when asking people to catch it, which means puppy. So while training IS the issue, it's not the owner's fault that it's untrained if it's only a few months old. The real problem is likely the whole "walking a dog from your bike on-leash in a city." deal.

I tend to view the stigmatisation of a word to this degree as counter-productive since it shifts the focus away from the real problem - i.e. chronic inequality of income between black and white communities through poor public services that feeds a lack of opportunity for income mobility. Time spent discussing the degree to which users of the word should be shunned, whether it's said by a comedian, other black people, actual racists, is time not being spent discussing those material issues.

The base case of racism, i.e. the perpetuation of the view that black people are somehow genetically inferior or deserve to be subjugated in rights still certainly exists. What I suspect is more prevalent nowadays is discrimination founded in economic inequalities - the view that because black people are more likely to be poor, making the reflexive assumption they are more likely to resort to crime, and therefore are more dangerous and should be implicitly subject to harsher penalties. Which comes back to my main point, the best way to fix that is to actually narrow those economic inequalities.

how did this thread steer into climate change waters?
heh...god i love this site,and i love all you fuckers as well!

i don't really understand the rehashing of the election,trump is president.it is a done deal.

which is probably why i am struggling with the hillary diehards.politics is not a binary equation,so stop acting like it IS,and for the love of god stop with the condescension directed at people who did not vote YOUR way.ya'all are acting like we are your wayward dog who just took a giant dump on your carpet.

just LOOK at what you have done! LOOK at it! bad dog..baaaad dog.

@Stormsinger and @MilkmanDan were kind enough to share who they voted for,but they should not be put in a position to defend their vote.their vote,their choice and their right.

you may disagree,and that is fine,but to place all the blame on them,and their "like-minded compatriots" is arrogant,presumptuous and condescending.the reason hillary lost is not simply due to a few small holdouts.there are a myriad of reasons,and in my opinion,hillary should take most of the blame.

and what is this purity test @bareboards2 ?
do you mean a person standing by their principles?
remaining steadfast in their moral values?
showing us all that they would rather lose,than give up one ounce of integrity?

are you seriously criticizing people for holding to their own standards of morality and decency?

politics is not binary,there a many mitigating factors and political affilliation is only one aspect.

i have seen friends who voted for trump,and were extremely vocal about their support in the run up to election day,only to become eerily silent the further we got into trumps presidency.many of these people had voted for obama..TWICE..they wanted change.were desperate for change,and now they are finding out,that change may not be what they were expecting.

because the trump presidency is going to one helluva horror show,but there are also positives to consider.it is not a total loss.

i have the seen the very same people who have ridiculed and berated fundamentalist christians for being ideologically rigid,and philosophically immovable.turn around and express the exact same rigidity,and binary thought processes when it comes to their girl hillary clinton.

i was talking the other day with a man i highly respect and admire,who flippantly and casually called me a racist.
my crime?
i had the audacity to criticize obama.
which he doubled down and accused me of being sexist for not supporting hillary,and being critical of her as well.

how is this NOT ideological rigidity?
that to critically examine two prominent public figures automatically equates to:racism and sexism.

this is the metric that i see so many hillary supporters use when dealing with someone that they may disagree.this is a cheap,ill thought and ultimately WEAK counter to valid criticisms.

at what point do hillary supporters stop labeling other people the most vile of terms,simply because they did not step into line with THEIR thinking,and begin to examine the very REAL problems that both the hillary campaign,and the DNC,created for themselves?

or is everybody simply a racist and sexist?
that's it..no discussion.

this is akin to the fundamentalist christian labeling anybody who disagrees with their religion,or has brought up solid criticisms,as being an agent of satan.

" i do not like what you are saying about hillary,so therefore you must be a sexist".

the easiest,and most human,thing we do when faced with information and/or criticism that is in direct opposition to our long held beliefs.is to demonize the person making those claims,and therefore silence any further disruption to our own subjective belief system.

so when i talk about "insulated bubbles",and "echo chambers".that right there is what i am referring to,and it is dangerous.

i refuse to judge anybody on how they voted.they had their reasons,and i may even disagree with those reasons,but they have a right to their vote and who am i to judge them?

rehashing the election,or assigning blame based on ideological differences,accomplishes nothing.the REAL work starts now.trump is in office,and he is gearing up to be an unmitigated disaster.

so get involved.head to your next town hall meeting and speak your piece.start to connect with the political movements in your area and start to put pressure on your local representative.

i think we can all agree that trump is awful on so many levels,but to witness the american people become so politically engaged,so politically active,more active than they have been in decades.it really is inspiring,and all this is due to trump.

if hillary had won,would we see the same kind of newly energized,and politically active public?

i don't think so.

so let us stop with the rehashing.
stop with the blaming.
and get off our asses,step outside our own little,insulated echo chamber and start to engage.

don't know how to step outside your own bubble?
there is an app for that:
https://videosift.com/video/it-is-time-to-pop-your-social-media-echo-chamber-bubble

*oh,and even though i may have alluded to who i voted for.let me state clearly that i voted for hillary.i stick by my dislike of the "lesser of two evils" but come on...trump in the white house?

yeeesh....

I pretty much completely agree with you, but to play devil's advocate:

"Wasting resources and alienating our neighbors and allies with no tangible benefit." -- Stopping or even reducing illegal immigration would be a tangible benefit. I personally have no problems with immigrants, refugees, etc. coming in to the US, working (legally) and getting benefits like emergency and other health care, etc. But illegal / undocumented immigration can be a real problem.

I don't think the wall is a reasonable answer to that real problem, but it is part of the package that Trump sold to voters to get them to vote for him. As a result, he pretty much has to at least pretend like he's going to try to actually build it.


"I wish Republicans (since they have the purse strings) who bemoan the state of the country, would put fixing it first." -- A bunch of the people who voted for Trump consider illegal immigration to be a very important issue. Not all for racist reasons, either. Anyway, those people see the wall as Trump attempting to fix that issue -- something that other politicians haven't done.


I'd massively prefer Trump creating a giant jobs program by repairing interstates, railroads, and other transportation, building lots of solar and/or nuclear power plants to meet future demands with cleaner energy, etc. But Trump didn't run on those kinds of promises; one of the few concrete things he ran on was the border wall.


I really don't mean to defend the idea of a border wall, which I agree is extremely problematic for many many reasons. However, it wouldn't be the most egregious and pointless waste of taxpayer dollars. We spend *way* too much money on the Military-Industrial Complex, although that isn't entirely a waste (merely 75% wasteful ). And the TSA, which I mentioned in the previous post, is set to cost us $7.6 billion in 2017 alone -- half to a third of what people suggest the wall would cost to build in total. And the TSA sets the bar for pointless, in my opinion. Absolutely nothing of value would be lost if it was eliminated, and actual travel security would probably get better by simply reverting to how things worked before Bush inflicted it on us.

just a totally expected and easily anticipated reaction to trumps inauguration.

the very people whose paycheck relies on partisan politics are putting on a show.

/golfclap

so when obama won,we saw white,lower income americans lose their shit..riot on the streets,and openly bemoan the end of american exceptionalism.

we saw republican mouthpieces and commentators somberly criticize obamas inauguration speech.like someone had just taken their last cookie.

and what did those giants of intellect,and power-houses of political analysis focus on over the next few months?

birth certificates.
kenyian born.
muslim.
richard wright.

they were not really making accusations,they were just asking.
juuuust asking questions.nothing wrong with that right?

so during the obama years,the political pundit class made issues of the most inane..and quite frankly..stupid of all things to focus on,and IGNORED the very real problems that obama deserved actual criticism for.

so all we are seeing here,is the political pundit class doing the exact same thing.

i have called trump "americas greatest used car salesmen" and "the best internet troll",but now that i am reading david cay johnstons "the making of donald trump",it appears i was being kind.

trump is far more despicable,grotesque and venal than i ever could have imagined.

but for this pundits to take such an easy,and lazy tact to create drama where there is none...just reveals just how far they will go to subvert their own integrity.

hitler references?
dude...that is lazy.

Trump is just a horrible sympton/reaction to our real problem *quality