Will America's Conscience Please Stand Up?

[DoomYoshi]

It never has been. There is no such group of people as black people, and even if there were, it wouldn't be a race. It's a lie invented by the racists to fuel their racist crap. Even acknowledging their argument is racist. That's what I said earlier, I'm not sure why you thought I was joking.

Race is defined as : "each of the major divisions of humankind, having distinct physical characteristics."

Such as say... skin color!

White (of european origin with "white skin") or black (of African origin with " dark black skin") or Brown (generally central/south american origin, though other might apply "with brown skin") in America are basically place holder terms to group people of a wide variety of different ethniticites/races and physical characteristics, into larger subsets. Society and language come up with these classification so we can have inteligent conversation about complex issues without getting bogged down in semantics. Would it make you feel better if I used a term like bigot/xenophobe to describe white people in USA that hate black people in USA? Then you can stop making a semantic argument that is irrelevant to Tzor's post?

But many black people are lighter than me, so skin color can't be it.

I'd be more comfortable if you just accepted that race is a human construct and has no scientific basis in fact. By even talking about it you are proving that, like all other "rationalists", 95% of what you believe is bullshit.

[Neoteny]

Melanin content of skin is a very simple genetic gradient that could never be labeled as anywhere approaching distinctive and is linked to no other physical traits that could be used to separate one "race" from another.

[mookiemcgee]

But many black people are lighter than me, so skin color can't be it.

Now you are contradicting yourself... remember your position is there is no such thing as black people it's just a construct that is 95% false.... So how can you be darker than something that doesn't exist?

I'm not trying to create a scientific hypothesis regarding "what is race", I'm highlighting well accepted norms in the English (USA) language which we most people in this country use. Since your trying to be all Stephen Colbert about this, here is a picture for reference of what most people mean when they talk about "white" people and "black" people... hint-the one on the left is the white person.

[DoomYoshi]

But many black people are lighter than me, so skin color can't be it.

Now you are contradicting yourself... remember your position is there is no such thing as black people it's just a construct that is 95% false.... So how can you be darker than something that doesn't exist?

I'm not trying to create a scientific hypothesis regarding "what is race", I'm highlighting well accepted norms in the English (USA) language which we most people in this country use. Since your trying to be all Stephen Colbert about this, here is a picture for reference of what most people mean when they talk about "white" people and "black" people... hint-the one on the left is the white person.

The well accepted norms are the problem. As long as I continue to allow you to use bullshit terminology the true problem - Democrats all being racist - will never get solved.

Here's another picture:


The one with the curly hair is the one who is part of the race of curlers.

[DoomYoshi]

While you are pondering that over, I figure I had better start from the top.

There is no such thing as "black rights" because there is no such thing as the "black race". In America, there exists an imaginary social distinction called black. Originally it was used to determine who was suitable to be a slave. That is all the distinction is for - that is the definition of black people. If you acknowledge that there is a black race, then you are also acknowledging that a subset of humans is fit only for slavery. You're not alone as most Western minds from Aristotle to John F. Kennedy have agreed with this general premise.

By saying there is such a thing as a black race, it fuels a myth that the world can be viewed as black vs. white, us vs. them. It is only a tribalistic jingoistic ballistic non-statistic.

If you go to Africa, they have a much more healthy view of race. There is no "black race" and it's not the "whites" who are subjugating them. Rather, it comes down to individual tribes and clans. The Dinka will enslave the Nuer, who will turn around and genocide against the Anuak(aka Luo). In fact the Nuer army that carries out this onslaught is even called the Nuer White Army because even in Africa white is seen as the color of purity. As neoteny said, skin color =/= race and it cannot, in fact it makes no sense.

Look at the Samoans, they are some of the darkest people but they are nothing like Kenyans at long distance running.

If skin color is the only thing and >90% of variation in skin color is only due to melanin, then we can class people on the skin color scale. In the summer I am a black man, so when I apply for school I should get the visible minority discount. In the winter, I am white again. When I wear a suit, nobody thinks I am black. If I wear poopy pants* with my hat backwards, I have no problem passing for black.

*Poopy pants:

show

[nietzsche]

The responsibility of either torturing or giving the order. By this I meant, the moral responsibility of torturing someone basing yourself in what others say, not being an idiot and realising the government lies, or colours the truth somehow to manipulate.

About you being in Army, Buster, I completely agree, once you're there the decision was made and you're to follow thru for your own sake. No philosophizing there.

Of course the government lies about bullshit. My 2nd deployment wasn't for freedom, edit - but for dubious reasons.

You're asking me to do all of the leg work. Find out if he did indeed have ties to planting the bomb, fly myself all the way to the border, capture him, and then torture him for that information so I can have a clean conscience that the guy deserves it. I can't do all of that by myself.
Anywho, you still haven't answered the question. Don't over complicate it. You for sure know this guy planted or helped plan it. Would you or would not torture him for the location of the nuke?

Thanks buster brown. <3

how obese is him? and is this in the morning? have i had my coffee? because i won't probably be in the mood of lifting heavy objects if i haven't had my coffee.

i would probably ask myself what would be the legal implications.. would i be do time for killing the fat man? sort of like, "we thank you for saving those 5 lives.. but you knew you'll kill this fat father of 4, so, we're taking your home and your car to give to the kids and will give you a reduced sentence of 5 years.. but you're gonna have a record. yeah, cry me a river, you should've thought twice.. those junkies it's not the first time they tie themselves to the rails and cause an accident when the driver needs to switch and go towards the chemical plant. many commuters arrive late to work for these idiots"

when you make the number 5, you sort of need more context lol. Make it my mom instead of 5 randos and i kill the fat guy without hesitation and yell at him "tough luck fatass" while he's falling.

i don't think you're a sociopath.

The test question is meant to be a matter of instinct. I obviously can't sit you in a room, time you, and ask for an answer on the forum. The whole point of the question though is that a sociopath would have 0 problems pushing the fat guy off the train to save five people. I don't think it matters really who's tied to the tracks, rather than just making the decision.

Anyways, same thing as before, you're overcomplicating the question and trying to make it logistical.

I think you're missing my point here. It's not that Abortion is right or wrong. It's that your government is a group of people that think in their own interests first. I'd say 95% of politics are thinking more in how to get another couple of millions for their retirement instead of hwo to make things right. Another 80% of them had had to ask for help along the way to get there.. and have favours to repay. Others were caught doing something illegal along the way and are grabbed by the balls by other politicians or other groups of power.

I'll never understand politics completely and the shady backdoor deals that go on behind it.

What I do know is that without a form of governance, we as a society would implode. Looting and killing would be a norm, nobody would give a shit about their neighbor, so on and so forth.

You can argue that the government as a collective acts on it's own interests but I disagree (at least with ours and several other current governments) that it acts in the interests of it's people, at least to a degree. I simply can look at history and see how we have gotten here today, and it's mostly due to the government listening to the people in some form or another. There are of course crooked politicians. The war on drugs I think is one of the biggest fucking mistakes in recent American history all because Nixon had a hard on for 'Nam. Our system is not perfect. And again, no country is picture perfect either. The government basically decides what's right and what's wrong, but I'm fortunate enough to live in a country to where it gives enough of a shit to where we can voice our opinion about what should be right and wrong.

Government policies are deeply influenced by private interests. You're government or it's top officials in a certain organisation might want something done no matter what.. and the would be willing to go on a "70-30% chance this guy works for a cell" and approve him to be tortured for info.

Debatable. If a policy comes is implemented, you're always going to have winners and losers, it's just a matter of having that policy approved by different legislators. That's why (normally) incredibly shitty bills never see the light of day. Now if you want to argue that people in power are acting in their own self interest or pursuing a specific goal IE: "I want ISIS eliminated," then yeah, I really expect them to resort to whatever resource they can to accomplish that goal. If they have to act on a gambit for a suspected or known terrorist by torturing information, knowing that the information he has is one step closer to accomplishing that goal, to me the ends justify means. That's one entire group gone, no more bombings at concerts, bridges or other populated areas.

Of course there are other notoriously shitty politicians that are going to act on their own self interest to either preserve power or money and what have you. Nixon, again, is a perfect example. I'm not arguing that we're perfect, or that we live in a paradise, but I'd rather live here, where I feel like the government does give a shit about it's people vs living in a third world country where a dictator can kill whomever on a whim just because he feels like it, or I'm not going to get ran over by a tank during a protest, etc.

If you or a family member got caught in that position, tortured because his 8yo is curious and was googling for videos of alqaeda shootings or whatever reason.. would it look fair to you? Or simply a guy in a war, working for your "enemy" and your boss suddenly thinks he's got info.. quickly skypes with a fat Russell Crow having a venti chai late and he gives him green light.. that guy working for your enemy probably has kids, and from his point of view, he's helping his people to avoid being invaded by white dudes disrespectful of it's culture.

I'm not sure if I should ask you to consider all this, I wouldn't even want you to have any second thoughts about your actions. I'm talking of theoretical positions and you've been there. It means, just having my coffee for me.

Well, thankfully it doesn't work like that here, otherwise all those shooters that the FBI had admittedly been monitoring but didn't act on probably wouldn't have happened.

In terms of the whole war thing - War is an ugly business, we can all agree on that. It's not a walk in the park with your dog. The problem with this war vs previous wars is that it's entirely based around Guerilla Warfare. We don't know who is who because the enemy one minute would be firing at us, the next minute, ditch the gun, change clothes and act like nothing happened. Over the years, we came up with systems that track and ID people with their eye iris and finger prints. This was meant to reduce innocent lives being taken or captured, questioned and falsely imprisoned. People make bad calls though. Sometimes it's an incredibly shitty call. Sometimes it's the right one. There are people out there that refuse to follow an order because it looks and more than likely is a really shitty call, others just blindly follow it. I'm also not going to deeply philosophy the people that were killed. I can't go find the guy that killed Dickhut and tell him "He had a wife and child, how could you?" Because his response would probably be something along the lines of us being infidels and that Allah demands us to be purged, blah blah. That's war man, you don't think about that kind of shit because everyone has their reasons to fight and their reasons to want to live, it's been like that since time memorial.

I never would have second thoughts on my actions. What's done is done. I'm not ashamed of it.

tl;dr




lol



Ok I'm going to try to wrap it up, or make it a more concise topic because, i think i see where you're coming from.

I understand your practical approach. And I'm nobody to contradict you about how life is in the battle field.

However, i still stand behind the idea that governments shouldn't have the right to torture people. It's a line that must remain. I don't know if it's worse than killing, i think it definitely is, but some people disagree.

If any person decides at any given point that he will torture x person because he thinks by doing that he could prevent a nuclear attack, he should be face a judge to decide about his actions.

We would never agree to which extent governments and people in power would abuse the power to torture others, so let leave that behind. It's IMO a basic principle that in our day an age all nations should abide by. And in theory, they do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Na ... st_Torture

[KoolBak]

I find this whole black thing interesting and see that Yoshmonster is stating it correctly, although somewhat succinctly. The African American thing was an eye opener too in researching this. Too bad all this shit matters. It doesn't to me and my family.

My question, Yoshdude, is wtf is YOUR ethnic background? You keep bringing up your skin color, so spill it baby. South American? Middle eastern? Spanish? Latino? My pasty white German / Irish ancestry is pretty obvious (as is my bulletproof liver).

Hate to generalize, but the most beautiful women I've ever seen have been mixes of ethnic backgrounds including darker pigmented skin. Met this amazing girl once in Kauai whose mom was from Venezuela and dad from Africa. Gods she was beautiful.....had an employee years ago who was a Belize native....same story.

[KoolBak]

Killed thread....check.

[tzor]

Obama's dad was from Africa therefore Obama is not black?

Well, the definitions are complex these days. Obama does not have any background with the African populations who were specifically chosen for the long voyage across the Atlantic (for example, the selection criteria was based on the inability to sweat, allowing them to retain salt during the long hot voyage in the hold). None of his ancestors had to endure the hardships of slavery, or Jim Crow laws. In fact, he wound up with elite education most children born with slave ancestry still only dream about.

The complaint that Obama wasn't "black" by the way, originated from the African American community. Others mentioned his bi-racial nature.

[Neoteny]

(for example, the selection criteria was based on the inability to sweat, allowing them to retain salt during the long hot voyage in the hold).

Lmao what the actual f*ck are you talking about?

[mrswdk]

Obama isn't black because he is able to sweat.

[TA1LGUNN3R]

Hate to generalize, but the most beautiful women I've ever seen have been mixes of ethnic backgrounds including darker pigmented skin. Met this amazing girl once in Kauai whose mom was from Venezuela and dad from Africa. Gods she was beautiful.....had an employee years ago who was a Belize native....same story.

Truth

[DoomYoshi]

The only three ethnicities I can claim for sure are Aryan (the blond hair/blue eye type, not the Turkish type), Rhenish and Hun.

[tzor]

Lmao what the actual f*ck are you talking about?

Biohistory of slavery and blood pressure differences in blacks today. A hypothesis.

Genetic factors are known to play an important role in the variations in blood pressure levels. However, genetic factors that explain the higher average blood pressure levels of western hemisphere blacks when compared with African blacks have not been seriously considered. Because the genetic makeup of a population is largely determined by biological and ecological forces in the past, an examination of the biohistory of blacks, specifically the slavery era, was conducted. An overview of the salient findings of that investigation is included in this article. The published historical evidence on the transatlantic slave trade and New World slavery (from the 16th century to the 19th century) reveals that conditions existed for "natural selection," and therefore, genetic changes were virtually inevitable in the slave populations. During this period of history, mortality was extremely high, and fertility (or reproductive success) was so low among the survivors that most plantation societies in the western hemisphere depended on a constant importation of captives (over 12 million) from Africa for the viability of the plantation communities. Because the major causes of death were salt-depletive diseases such as diarrhea, fevers, and vomiting, it is argued that individuals with an enhanced genetic-based ability to conserve salt had a distinct survival advantage over others and were, therefore, more likely to bequeath their genotype to subsequent generations of Western hemisphere blacks. Thus, it is predicted that blacks in the Americas have a greater frequency of individuals with an enhanced genetic-based ability to conserve salt than African blacks.

I would post more modern articles on this but apparently my internet has been stuck in a kind of temporal loop. (Cool tracert of those sites by the way ... it keeps going back to the same router over and over again.)

[Neoteny]

I know what you're talking about. There's a real reason you won't post any newer articles even if you fix your internet. If you go over to the wonderful website pubmed and, very intelligently, begin smashing your keyboard against your face until the words "slavery" and "hypertension" appear in the search field, then gently poke the return button with the very tip of your penis, you will queue up a grand total of fourteen hits. Fourteen! Definitely an amount of research one could use to generate a respectable theory. Of these fourteen hits, three are from one dude, and several others are irrelevant or actively rejecting the hypothesis. One of them referring to it as a "yarn." This is not a dense field of study, and you should not be using Doctor Oz as a jumping point to wheel off weird theories of how selection works, or for how genetics and race affect disease and treatment. Or for anything else really. So, I know what you're talking about.

But I ask again: Tzor, what the actual f*ck are you talking about?

[DoomYoshi]

This is a perfect example of what scientists mean when they say "it's only a hypothesis". You play the telephone game down the line and you end up with an undisputed fact.

[Neoteny]

Slave hypertension also brings up fourteen hits, but they seem a bit more serious about discussing factors like poverty, nutrition, etc. One of those is a proper article that is hating on this hypothesis too.

[mrswdk]

It's simple. The way to tell if someone is black or not is to put them in water and see if they float.

[Neoteny]

Nonsense. We are serious scientists who use calipers and logic.

[nietzsche]

i'm not sure what does the rest of the paper says, but what the abstract say is NOT what tzor said.

[DoomYoshi]

All black people are actually white dudes from Australia:
http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/09/technology/fake-black-lives-matter-facebook-page/index.html

[tkr4lf]

The responsibility of either torturing or giving the order. By this I meant, the moral responsibility of torturing someone basing yourself in what others say, not being an idiot and realising the government lies, or colours the truth somehow to manipulate.

About you being in Army, Buster, I completely agree, once you're there the decision was made and you're to follow thru for your own sake. No philosophizing there.

Of course the government lies about bullshit. My 2nd deployment wasn't for freedom, edit - but for dubious reasons.

You're asking me to do all of the leg work. Find out if he did indeed have ties to planting the bomb, fly myself all the way to the border, capture him, and then torture him for that information so I can have a clean conscience that the guy deserves it. I can't do all of that by myself.
Anywho, you still haven't answered the question. Don't over complicate it. You for sure know this guy planted or helped plan it. Would you or would not torture him for the location of the nuke?

Thanks buster brown. <3

how obese is him? and is this in the morning? have i had my coffee? because i won't probably be in the mood of lifting heavy objects if i haven't had my coffee.

i would probably ask myself what would be the legal implications.. would i be do time for killing the fat man? sort of like, "we thank you for saving those 5 lives.. but you knew you'll kill this fat father of 4, so, we're taking your home and your car to give to the kids and will give you a reduced sentence of 5 years.. but you're gonna have a record. yeah, cry me a river, you should've thought twice.. those junkies it's not the first time they tie themselves to the rails and cause an accident when the driver needs to switch and go towards the chemical plant. many commuters arrive late to work for these idiots"

when you make the number 5, you sort of need more context lol. Make it my mom instead of 5 randos and i kill the fat guy without hesitation and yell at him "tough luck fatass" while he's falling.

i don't think you're a sociopath.

The test question is meant to be a matter of instinct. I obviously can't sit you in a room, time you, and ask for an answer on the forum. The whole point of the question though is that a sociopath would have 0 problems pushing the fat guy off the train to save five people. I don't think it matters really who's tied to the tracks, rather than just making the decision.

Anyways, same thing as before, you're overcomplicating the question and trying to make it logistical.

I think you're missing my point here. It's not that Abortion is right or wrong. It's that your government is a group of people that think in their own interests first. I'd say 95% of politics are thinking more in how to get another couple of millions for their retirement instead of hwo to make things right. Another 80% of them had had to ask for help along the way to get there.. and have favours to repay. Others were caught doing something illegal along the way and are grabbed by the balls by other politicians or other groups of power.

I'll never understand politics completely and the shady backdoor deals that go on behind it.

What I do know is that without a form of governance, we as a society would implode. Looting and killing would be a norm, nobody would give a shit about their neighbor, so on and so forth.

You can argue that the government as a collective acts on it's own interests but I disagree (at least with ours and several other current governments) that it acts in the interests of it's people, at least to a degree. I simply can look at history and see how we have gotten here today, and it's mostly due to the government listening to the people in some form or another. There are of course crooked politicians. The war on drugs I think is one of the biggest fucking mistakes in recent American history all because Nixon had a hard on for 'Nam. Our system is not perfect. And again, no country is picture perfect either. The government basically decides what's right and what's wrong, but I'm fortunate enough to live in a country to where it gives enough of a shit to where we can voice our opinion about what should be right and wrong.

Government policies are deeply influenced by private interests. You're government or it's top officials in a certain organisation might want something done no matter what.. and the would be willing to go on a "70-30% chance this guy works for a cell" and approve him to be tortured for info.

Debatable. If a policy comes is implemented, you're always going to have winners and losers, it's just a matter of having that policy approved by different legislators. That's why (normally) incredibly shitty bills never see the light of day. Now if you want to argue that people in power are acting in their own self interest or pursuing a specific goal IE: "I want ISIS eliminated," then yeah, I really expect them to resort to whatever resource they can to accomplish that goal. If they have to act on a gambit for a suspected or known terrorist by torturing information, knowing that the information he has is one step closer to accomplishing that goal, to me the ends justify means. That's one entire group gone, no more bombings at concerts, bridges or other populated areas.

Of course there are other notoriously shitty politicians that are going to act on their own self interest to either preserve power or money and what have you. Nixon, again, is a perfect example. I'm not arguing that we're perfect, or that we live in a paradise, but I'd rather live here, where I feel like the government does give a shit about it's people vs living in a third world country where a dictator can kill whomever on a whim just because he feels like it, or I'm not going to get ran over by a tank during a protest, etc.

If you or a family member got caught in that position, tortured because his 8yo is curious and was googling for videos of alqaeda shootings or whatever reason.. would it look fair to you? Or simply a guy in a war, working for your "enemy" and your boss suddenly thinks he's got info.. quickly skypes with a fat Russell Crow having a venti chai late and he gives him green light.. that guy working for your enemy probably has kids, and from his point of view, he's helping his people to avoid being invaded by white dudes disrespectful of it's culture.

I'm not sure if I should ask you to consider all this, I wouldn't even want you to have any second thoughts about your actions. I'm talking of theoretical positions and you've been there. It means, just having my coffee for me.

Well, thankfully it doesn't work like that here, otherwise all those shooters that the FBI had admittedly been monitoring but didn't act on probably wouldn't have happened.

In terms of the whole war thing - War is an ugly business, we can all agree on that. It's not a walk in the park with your dog. The problem with this war vs previous wars is that it's entirely based around Guerilla Warfare. We don't know who is who because the enemy one minute would be firing at us, the next minute, ditch the gun, change clothes and act like nothing happened. Over the years, we came up with systems that track and ID people with their eye iris and finger prints. This was meant to reduce innocent lives being taken or captured, questioned and falsely imprisoned. People make bad calls though. Sometimes it's an incredibly shitty call. Sometimes it's the right one. There are people out there that refuse to follow an order because it looks and more than likely is a really shitty call, others just blindly follow it. I'm also not going to deeply philosophy the people that were killed. I can't go find the guy that killed Dickhut and tell him "He had a wife and child, how could you?" Because his response would probably be something along the lines of us being infidels and that Allah demands us to be purged, blah blah. That's war man, you don't think about that kind of shit because everyone has their reasons to fight and their reasons to want to live, it's been like that since time memorial.

I never would have second thoughts on my actions. What's done is done. I'm not ashamed of it.

tl;dr




lol



Ok I'm going to try to wrap it up, or make it a more concise topic because, i think i see where you're coming from.

I understand your practical approach. And I'm nobody to contradict you about how life is in the battle field.

However, i still stand behind the idea that governments shouldn't have the right to torture people. It's a line that must remain. I don't know if it's worse than killing, i think it definitely is, but some people disagree.

If any person decides at any given point that he will torture x person because he thinks by doing that he could prevent a nuclear attack, he should be face a judge to decide about his actions.

We would never agree to which extent governments and people in power would abuse the power to torture others, so let leave that behind. It's IMO a basic principle that in our day an age all nations should abide by. And in theory, they do: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Na ... st_Torture

Re torture:
Torture is notoriously unreliable. If you hurt somebody enough, they will tell you anything they think you want to hear just to get the pain to stop. Not to mention it's cruel and unusual. You know, that thing that our constitution protects against.

Anybody that advocates for torture is against the values that this country originally stood for. Sorry, but that's truth right there.

[tkr4lf]

Hate to generalize, but the most beautiful women I've ever seen have been mixes of ethnic backgrounds including darker pigmented skin. Met this amazing girl once in Kauai whose mom was from Venezuela and dad from Africa. Gods she was beautiful.....had an employee years ago who was a Belize native....same story.

Truth

Most def.

Hottest women I've ever seen are half black, half asian. Doesn't really matter which specific country they're from, as long as there is African ancestry mixed with (eastern) Asian ancestry.

[mrswdk]

Supposedly mixed race people of basically whatever 2+ races mixed are better looking, healthier etc. because the wider mix of genes helps ensure that better ones end up in the child.

[nietzsche]

we're definitely sexier and stronger.