@Diogenes

Thank you for your detailed answer. I do agree with you that context matters and that words are neither inherently good or bad by themselves. However, I think you’re looking at the situation from a more microscopic point of view as a simple joke between two people. I prefer to take a more macroscopic view of the situation. Allow me to explain.

Going back to my hypothetical example, it’s true that I didn't mean any harm when I used the term "retard" towards my brother. I think all people like to think of themselves as "good" people. For example, I would never in my life point at person with Down Syndrome and scream "Retard!" at the top of my lungs or attempt to belittle someone with an actual mental disability. The problem, however, is that by using the word in the way I did in the example I am tacitly--and quite publicly (remember this is happening in a parking lot)--endorsing the equating of people with mental disabilities to stupidity. I may be making a joke towards my brother but it isn’t just my brother that winds up being the butt of the joke.

Now maybe from your perspective, it’s just one person saying a joke. Look at the context, you might say. It’s a distasteful joke but no big deal, right? And I could agree with that if it was just some off-color joke limited to a single individual. Unfortunately, and I think we can both agree on this, the use of “retard” to mean “stupid” is a relatively common occurrence in American vernacular. You couple that with the stigma against mental illness and mental disability and I think it becomes fairly plain to see that on the macroscopic level (i.e. society) we have a problem: a group that is socially disadvantaged and historically discriminated against is even further marginalized by the language people use in their everyday lives. Now, if you don’t agree this is a problem, I’m afraid the conversation has to end here since the logical conclusion of such a stance is that people should be free to say whatever they want and be immune to criticism, damn the consequences.

But if you do agree it is a problem, how are we going to solve it? My take on the situation is that doing absolutely nothing when witnessing a situation like the one I've described is unlikely to improve society in any way. The status quo will be maintained if people are not confronted about their language use.

That being said, people often say things without fully comprehending the implications of what they are saying. They often talk the way they were raised and never once questioned whether what they were saying was actually harmful or not. I don’t think people should be pilloried for that, but in the event that they are unaware of how they are contributing to the discrimination and oppression of others they certainly need to be educated.

This necessarily entails confrontation, although that confrontation might be very low key. Continuing the example above, I think a good way for the woman in the example to “enlighten” me about my misguided use of the word “retard” would be something along the lines of this:

“Excuse me. I really wish you wouldn’t equate having a mental handicap with stupidity. My nephew has Down Syndrome and even though, yes, he can’t do everything that a person without an intellectual handicap can do he is most certainly not stupid.”

Now, all of that said, I see nothing wrong with publicly shaming those who clearly understand the implications of what they are saying and out of either stubbornness, a need for attention, or actual spite willfully continue to use language that is degrading or oppressive. A white person frequently using the N-word in public to describe black people, for instance, is a situation where I’d be completely fine with them getting verbally eviscerated. We don't always have to be polite, even when being politically correct.

As a final note, I want to make it clear that I believe in free speech in the sense that everyone should be free to say whatever they wish. However, as a caveat to that I also believe that free speech comes with the responsibility that people must own everything they say. If someone wishes to use offensive, degrading, or oppressive language that is their choice. Free speech in no way gives them a free pass from criticism of that choice, however.

@Diogenes

I'm not sure I'm following what you're saying. Why should a reasonable person be pissed off at a third party calling out offensive language use? To use a hypothetical:

I jokingly call my brother a "retard" because he locks his keys in the car. We grew up in the 80s, so this this pejorative is something we are comfortable with and feel no inhibitions about using. My brother laughs it off.

Now let's assume this happens in a parking lot as we're standing outside my brother's car and a woman passing by overhears my comment and chastises me for equating stupid actions with people who have mental disabilities.

Should reasonable bystanders watching all this be pissed off, since my comment wasn't directed at the woman? On the one hand, my brother and I weren't offended by the use of the word "retard" to mean stupid. On the other hand, our very usage of the word "retard" in that particular way promotes and sustains a culture that already heavily looks down on mental illness and mental disabilities.

I'm genuinely curious about your answer to this. If I'm reading your comment correctly, the primary negative of PC language that you see is that some people feel smug when they call out other people on their language usage. But does the fact that some people are smug about it make them wrong in pointing out the offender?

Pounds? Feet?

Jesus America, get your shit together.

Kilograms. Metres.

Hell, you're measuring Newtons which are Kg/m/s^2 .... do you see lb or f in that equation?

This is why things crash into mars.

Yes, by using both pacers and wind blockers, the Nike attempt wouldn't have counted as a world record. At one point it was considered that a sub-4 minute mile was scientifically impossible. The science here would be more reassuring if they talked about that fancy equation, and how it matches various real world runners very well. For example, runner A has a VO2 max of 60, and an efficiency of 95% of theoretical peak. It should be impossible for him to get below the equation's theoretical best time of 2:07, but the best in the world with those stats should get close. Science is all about building a model you think is representative of real life, then test it. I don't see any testing of the model here to prove its validity.

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....

The credit card companies get 2-4% of every single purchase made with every single card. They really couldn't give a shit if some pay on time, and others keep a balance. The consumer end of the equation is peanuts. That's why, if you ask, they'll lock your card for a few months and not charge interest while you pay it down.

Recently, they've changed it so they charge 2-4% for refunds as well. So if you buy something for $100, Visa holds onto $3. If you come back and get your money back, Visa holds onto ANOTHER $3. So your favourite store just got reamed for $6, with no actual purchase being final.

In that case, averaging your speeds would lower the average speed, not raise it, since lap two would be a negative distance, but not a negative time, so a negative speed in the equation.

I dunno about that. There's lots of scientific evidence for quantum mechanics. It was disagreement between experimental results and theory which lead to the development of quantum mechanics in the first place. There have definitely been repeatable experiments demonstrating quantum entanglement, for instance.

String Theory, now, that's where you've got your unprovable assumptions. Whereas quantum mechanics at least has a big "we don't know why this is" hole in the middle, the string theory guys would just posit the existence of a bunch more dimensions to make the equations work.

Not that I actually understand the mathematics of any of it, mind you.

I don't know why they didn't go thru the proper red tape to enter America legally. But then again, what does someone living on the streets and off the kindness of strangers in cities off the grid know about proper first world nation entry methodology?

I don't know what it feels like to struggle with illegal immigrantion, but I do know what my favorite cartoon illegal immigrant, Stitch, would say,

"Ohana means family, and family means never saying goodbye."

I consider Mexico part of our Ohana -- and some of those people are struggling to get here to meet their literal ohana. Maybe Amurica means fuck you, and fuck you means goodbye.

Anyway, I'm just an average American citizen that's doing alright in life, not perfect, but I certainly don't blame Mexicans for my problems... Idiots do though. Similar to how idiots take a few bible verses against homosexuality and weigh that sin as greater than all others, these other idiots similarly equate Mexican immigration as a higher, more serious issue than it actually is.

In psychology that's called "compensation", where you pretty much ignore your incompetence and inadequacies, and redirect your efforts into improving something else to put your mind at ease. This wall is compensation for America's actual problems.

I'm not sure if I am saying it clearly, so let me attempt to break it down. When I say that a country benefits, I mean the businesses of that country benefit. The economy overall does not.

I don't really care about right wing vs left wing, other than that the left currently doesn't really seem to care about illegal immigration. I don't know why, perhaps they see a large number of possible voters if they can simply legalize everyone. But that is speculation on my part.

As far as Mcdonalds, or other fast food locations, I don't really have an issue if they need to charge a few cents more so that they can pay a living wage. I do care if they hire illegals to keep their prices low.

While it isn't the illegal immigrants fault, they are breaking the law and should be returned to their home countries until such time as either the immigration laws change, or until they apply properly according to the law. Businesses should be held accountable as well. It isn't an either/or equation, you shouldn't get to ignore the law so you can benefit, no matter who you are.

I think there are aspects of this that fall into the realm of philosophy.

I personally don't think we can ever have "The Truth" in that ultimate sense. Pretend for a minute that the SUVAT equations (the equations of motion) are completely accurate. I can drop a ball from a certain height and you can time it and we'll find to some degree of accuracy that the equations were right.

The ball and the floor didn't need to calculate anything. Whilst me and you sit there with a stopwatch technical manual, assorted tape measures to find the distance, expensive cameras to figure out when i dropped the ball..... Whilst we are tying down an uncertainty, the ball and floor have already done it.

When you get right down to it, we simply cannot know an exact time. We can never know an 'exact' anything, because now we need to discuss where the "ball" ends and where the "floor" begins on a molecular level. And no matter how much we agree, the uncertainty principle gets us in the end - we don't and can't know the exact location of fundamental particles. An "exact" anything ends up being a conceptual thing that we can't ever test.

But where i'm going with this is that we're kind of talking about the nature of understanding. We know the volume of a sphere if we know its radius, but how do we create the same sphere accurately? Our brains don't have a resolution, but the tools we use in reality do - reality itself quite possibly has a resolution. We think of minecraft as a blocky, low resolution simulation of an analogue reality. Similarly, i think maths is an 'analogue' (in that it can be "exact") simulation of a limited resolution reality - reality only looks analogue when you don't look very closely.

All that is to say, we DO understand the ball dropping and hitting the floor, but "exactness" is a thing that only exists in the act itself. The only thing left for us to decide is what we consider accurate enough.

Perhaps "god" wanted to know what would happen if he set off a big bang. He sat down, calculated it all out in the language of the gods (the language of perfection; maths) and realised that due to uncertainty, the only way to know exactly what would happen was for it to actually happen. (Douglas Adams?)

Considering Sanders appeal, I don't think abandoning all their ideals is called for, but examining which are important and which equate to morality bullying would be good. I think most leftists agree that the name calling isn't helpful (with exceptions for total douchbags).
Really, I think an honest, non bombastic candidate from either side would be preferable to either choice we had.

Sorry to hear that pc thuggery is so prevalent there. That does sound overboard, but I totally support banning proselytizing of any kind at a school that takes public funding. Spreading your belief on my dime is unacceptable.

Totally lost me by equating morality with religiousness, especially the type of religiousness most prevalent today. They are more often diametrically opposed.

@Fairbs
i agree that trump is dangerous.i am reading david cay johnstons "the making of donald trump"...and boy oh boy...

i viewed trump as a used car salesman,a circus barker but he is worse..far worse.

as for obama acting on russian interference,and the fact that nobody is pointing out the obvious...is just depressing to me.

the ability for a president to do that never existed until GW and his merry band of neo-cons.

but thanks to addington and woo,the president has the power to do,what previously took approval from congress.

as i told newt,IF the russians DID hack and therefore influence our elections,then this would equate to two things:
1.this is an act of war.
2.the election would be considered compromised,and trumps presidency would be illegitimate.

i am confident that there was cyber-spying going on.all nations engage in this tactic,and as dore points out,we even spy on our allies.we can safely assume that along with the spying,there was hacking,again...all nation states participate in this tactic.

but as of now there is NO evidence that putin directed russian intelligence to hack the 2017 election in order to put in his muppet trump.

so until such time as they provide such evidence.
i will remain skeptical.
would not be the first time intelligence reports have been manipulated to politicize a cause.

see:iraq
see:vietnam
see:korean war
see:panama

shall i continue?

@bcglorf
i hear ya,but that is our responsibility,not the journalist or speaker.

for example i am reading david cay johnstons book "the making of trump".
johnston is a pulitzer prize winning journalist from the la times and the washington post.who also happens to be a republican.

the fact that he is republican does not automatically equate to his investigations being rightwing,slanted or biased.

the time for putting the onus on the outlet,or the individual was destroyed by FOX and it's "fair and balanced" bullshit.

we can lament the passing of walter cronkite,wooward and bernstein and I.F stone,or edward morrow.

but those days are gone,and it is up to us..all of us..to push back the ever increasing avalanche of propaganda and fake news.