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  • Originally posted by Stoic View Post
    ....Liberals seem to be more willing to embrace change than conservatives, for some reason.
    Let's go with this, because I agree.

    Progressives, by definition, can NEVER come to a place where they say "OK, we have achieved our goals, and can hold the status quo". NEVER.

    Because they are 'progressives', they have to always push further and further.... The whole "gay rights" thing was about equality.... then it added transexuals, then "queers", then the gender confused, then... what's next?

    It will always get loonier and loonier until somebody stops and says, "hey, wait --- we have gone WAY off the rational....". (That person becomes a conservative )

    So what ends up happening is that progressives, in order to sound "progressive", have to outstupid the other progressives.

    I have do admit, though, it's entertaining to watch, and it's comforting to know that, eventually, you guys go so far that America finally says, "um.... ok, this is weird...".
    The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

    Comment


    • Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post

      Let's go with this, because I agree.

      Progressives, by definition, can NEVER come to a place where they say "OK, we have achieved our goals, and can hold the status quo". NEVER.

      Because they are 'progressives', they have to always push further and further.... The whole "gay rights" thing was about equality.... then it added transexuals, then "queers", then the gender confused, then... what's next?

      It will always get loonier and loonier until somebody stops and says, "hey, wait --- we have gone WAY off the rational....". (That person becomes a conservative )

      So what ends up happening is that progressives, in order to sound "progressive", have to outstupid the other progressives.

      I have do admit, though, it's entertaining to watch, and it's comforting to know that, eventually, you guys go so far that America finally says, "um.... ok, this is weird...".
      Source: https://iea.org.uk/blog/the-economics-of-political-correctness



      Over the past few years, spiked online magazine has consistently and robustly defended the principle of free speech against the censorship demands of the politically correct, whatever quarter they may come from. It is great, of course, that there is at least one magazine in which the phrase ‘I believe in free speech’ is unlikely to be followed by a ‘but…’, and more likely to be followed by an ‘even for…’. But while I fully support the spiked line, I also think the spiked authors sometimes misinterpret the intentions of the ‘PC brigade’, and would like to offer an alternative interpretation rooted in boring, old-fashioned textbook economics.

      Spiked authors believe that PC is driven by a loathing for ordinary people. According to spiked, PC brigadiers view ordinary folks as extremely impressionable, easily excitable, and full of latent resentment. Exposure to the wrong opinions, even isolated words, could immediately awaken the lynch mob. PC, then, is about protecting ‘the vulnerable’ from the nasty tendencies of the majority population.

      But if PC was not really about protecting anyone, and really all about expressing one’s own moral superiority, PC credentials would be akin to what economists call a ‘positional good’.

      A positional good is a good that people acquire to signalise where they stand in a social hierarchy; it is acquired in order to set oneself apart from others. Positional goods therefore have a peculiar property: the utility their consumers derive from them is inversely related to the number of people who can access them.

      Positionality is not a property of the good itself, it is a matter of the consumer’s motivations. I may buy an exquisite variety of wine because I genuinely enjoy the taste, or acquire a degree from a reputable university because I genuinely appreciate what that university has to offer. But my motivation could also be to set myself apart from others, to present myself as more sophisticated or smarter. From merely observing that I consume the product, you could not tell my motivation. But you could tell it by observing how I respond once other people start drinking the same wine, or attending the same university.

      If I value those goods for their intrinsic qualities, their increasing popularity will not trouble me at all. After all, the enjoyment derived from wine or learning is not fixed, so your enjoyment does not subtract from my enjoyment. I may even invite others to join me – we can all have more of it.

      But if you see me moaning that the winemakers/the university have ‘sold out’, if you see me whinging about those ignoramuses who do not deserve the product because they (unlike me, of course) do not really appreciate it, you can safely conclude that for me, this good is a positional good. (Or was, before everybody else discovered it.) We can all become more sophisticated wine consumers, and we can all become better educated. But we can never all be above the national average, or in the top group, in terms of wine-connoisseurship, education, income, or anything else. We can all improve in absolute terms, but we cannot all simultaneously improve in relative terms. And that is what positional goods are all about – signalising a high position in a ranking, that is, a relation to others. This leads to a problem. Positional goods are used to signalise something that is by definition scarce, and yet the product which does the signalling is not scarce, or at least not inherently. You can increase the number of goods which signal a position in the Top 20 (of whatever), but the number of places in that Top 20 will only ever be, er, twenty. Increasing the number of signalling products will simply destroy their signalling function. Which is why the early owners of such a signalling product can get really mad at you if you acquire one too.

      We have all seen this phenomenon. Those of my age (1980 vintage) have probably witnessed it for the first time in their early teens, when an increasing number of their schoolmates tried to look like Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain, and being a fan of that band lost its ‘edginess’. ‘Being alternative’ is a positional good. We cannot all be alternative [1]. Literally not.

      Now remember how the ‘early adopters’ responded when Nirvana fandom went mainstream, and their social status was threatened, because there are clear parallels with PC: some of them went on to more extreme styles; others tried to repair the broken signal by giving endless sermons about the differences between ‘those who are in the know’ and ‘the poseurs’.

      PC-brigadiers behave exactly like owners of a positional good who panic because wider availability of that good threatens their social status. The PC brigade has been highly successful in creating new social taboos, but their success is their very problem. Moral superiority is a prime example of a positional good, because we cannot all be morally superior to each other. Once you have successfully exorcised a word or an opinion, how do you differentiate yourself from others now? You need new things to be outraged about, new ways of asserting your imagined moral superiority.

      You can do that by insisting that the no real progress has been made, that your issue is as real as ever, and just manifests itself in more subtle ways. Many people may imitate your rhetoric, but they do not really mean it, they are faking it, they are poseurs (here’s a nice example). You can also hugely inflate the definition of an existing offense (plenty of nice examples here.) Or you can move on to discover new things to label ‘offensive’, new victim groups, new patterns of dominance and oppression.

      If I am right, then Political Correctness is really just a special form of conspicuous consumption, leading to a zero-sum status race. The fact that PC fans are still constantly outraged, despite the fact that PC has never been so pervasive, would then just be a special form of the Easterlin Paradox.

      Keep up the good work, spiked team. But bear in mind that you are up against a powerful economic force.

      © Copyright Original Source

      Comment


      • Originally posted by CivilDiscourse View Post

        Source: https://iea.org.uk/blog/the-economics-of-political-correctness



        Over the past few years, spiked online magazine has consistently and robustly defended the principle of free speech against the censorship demands of the politically correct, whatever quarter they may come from. It is great, of course, that there is at least one magazine in which the phrase ‘I believe in free speech’ is unlikely to be followed by a ‘but…’, and more likely to be followed by an ‘even for…’. But while I fully support the spiked line, I also think the spiked authors sometimes misinterpret the intentions of the ‘PC brigade’, and would like to offer an alternative interpretation rooted in boring, old-fashioned textbook economics.

        Spiked authors believe that PC is driven by a loathing for ordinary people. According to spiked, PC brigadiers view ordinary folks as extremely impressionable, easily excitable, and full of latent resentment. Exposure to the wrong opinions, even isolated words, could immediately awaken the lynch mob. PC, then, is about protecting ‘the vulnerable’ from the nasty tendencies of the majority population.

        But if PC was not really about protecting anyone, and really all about expressing one’s own moral superiority, PC credentials would be akin to what economists call a ‘positional good’.

        A positional good is a good that people acquire to signalise where they stand in a social hierarchy; it is acquired in order to set oneself apart from others. Positional goods therefore have a peculiar property: the utility their consumers derive from them is inversely related to the number of people who can access them.

        Positionality is not a property of the good itself, it is a matter of the consumer’s motivations. I may buy an exquisite variety of wine because I genuinely enjoy the taste, or acquire a degree from a reputable university because I genuinely appreciate what that university has to offer. But my motivation could also be to set myself apart from others, to present myself as more sophisticated or smarter. From merely observing that I consume the product, you could not tell my motivation. But you could tell it by observing how I respond once other people start drinking the same wine, or attending the same university.

        If I value those goods for their intrinsic qualities, their increasing popularity will not trouble me at all. After all, the enjoyment derived from wine or learning is not fixed, so your enjoyment does not subtract from my enjoyment. I may even invite others to join me – we can all have more of it.

        But if you see me moaning that the winemakers/the university have ‘sold out’, if you see me whinging about those ignoramuses who do not deserve the product because they (unlike me, of course) do not really appreciate it, you can safely conclude that for me, this good is a positional good. (Or was, before everybody else discovered it.) We can all become more sophisticated wine consumers, and we can all become better educated. But we can never all be above the national average, or in the top group, in terms of wine-connoisseurship, education, income, or anything else. We can all improve in absolute terms, but we cannot all simultaneously improve in relative terms. And that is what positional goods are all about – signalising a high position in a ranking, that is, a relation to others. This leads to a problem. Positional goods are used to signalise something that is by definition scarce, and yet the product which does the signalling is not scarce, or at least not inherently. You can increase the number of goods which signal a position in the Top 20 (of whatever), but the number of places in that Top 20 will only ever be, er, twenty. Increasing the number of signalling products will simply destroy their signalling function. Which is why the early owners of such a signalling product can get really mad at you if you acquire one too.

        We have all seen this phenomenon. Those of my age (1980 vintage) have probably witnessed it for the first time in their early teens, when an increasing number of their schoolmates tried to look like Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain, and being a fan of that band lost its ‘edginess’. ‘Being alternative’ is a positional good. We cannot all be alternative [1]. Literally not.

        Now remember how the ‘early adopters’ responded when Nirvana fandom went mainstream, and their social status was threatened, because there are clear parallels with PC: some of them went on to more extreme styles; others tried to repair the broken signal by giving endless sermons about the differences between ‘those who are in the know’ and ‘the poseurs’.

        PC-brigadiers behave exactly like owners of a positional good who panic because wider availability of that good threatens their social status. The PC brigade has been highly successful in creating new social taboos, but their success is their very problem. Moral superiority is a prime example of a positional good, because we cannot all be morally superior to each other. Once you have successfully exorcised a word or an opinion, how do you differentiate yourself from others now? You need new things to be outraged about, new ways of asserting your imagined moral superiority.

        You can do that by insisting that the no real progress has been made, that your issue is as real as ever, and just manifests itself in more subtle ways. Many people may imitate your rhetoric, but they do not really mean it, they are faking it, they are poseurs (here’s a nice example). You can also hugely inflate the definition of an existing offense (plenty of nice examples here.) Or you can move on to discover new things to label ‘offensive’, new victim groups, new patterns of dominance and oppression.

        If I am right, then Political Correctness is really just a special form of conspicuous consumption, leading to a zero-sum status race. The fact that PC fans are still constantly outraged, despite the fact that PC has never been so pervasive, would then just be a special form of the Easterlin Paradox.

        Keep up the good work, spiked team. But bear in mind that you are up against a powerful economic force.

        © Copyright Original Source

        Yes, along with - if one person does something bad (failing grades in school) then let's punish EVERYBODY.
        If a bad guy with a gun does illegal things - let's punish the GOOD guys with guns...

        I'm more and more convinced that liberalism is a mental health disorder.
        The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

        Comment


        • Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post

          Socially, not scientifically.



          Because liberals have mushier brains.

          All of this goes to really stupid extremes like an old fat man identifying as a young girl, or a woman identifying as a cat.

          'I've gone back to being a child': Husband and father-of-seven, 52, leaves his wife and kids to live as a transgender SIX-YEAR-OLD girl named Stefonknee

          I identify as a cat, wear a tail and ears each day - The Sun

          Do you embrace that crap, as well?
          The existence of transgender people doesn't mean there aren't also people with psychological problems.

          Comment


          • Originally posted by seer View Post
            Not in this country, for instance something like 62% polled believe that you should only play on teams that match your birth gender.
            That has nothing to do with the definitions of "man" and "woman".

            Because there is no rational reason to change the definition of man and woman.
            Perhaps you have no rational reason to change the definition, but medical and scientific professionals do.

            Comment


            • Originally posted by Stoic View Post

              The existence of transgender people doesn't mean there aren't also people with psychological problems.
              But the loony left nutters have made it "popular" to be gender-confused. Even trying to foist it on young people who would never have had a problem with it.
              The first to state his case seems right until another comes and cross-examines him.

              Comment


              • Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post

                Trust the science!
                Females have two X chromosomes in their cells, while males have one X and one Y chromosome.
                A woman has two X chromosomes.



                When an adult human male IDs as a woman, he still only has one X chromosome, no matter how hard he tries to change that.
                Trust the science!
                The problem with attempting to define gender entirely by chromosomes is that there are rare cases of the intersex where someone, despite having an XY chromosome would be (on a physical level) considered to be female. For example, Complete androgen insensitivity syndrome. Leonhard posted about this several years ago:
                Originally posted by Leonhard View Post

                What is it about XY chromosomes that mean you're a man, despite anything else?

                Again, the only sexual difference is that instead of ovaries they have testicles. Otherwise, they have wombs, vaginas, labia minora and major, they looked exactly like girls when they were born, and that's what the doctor wrote down about them. They grew up as girls, matured with other girls as a teenager, grew breasts, wider hips. Their eye size to head ratio matches female proportions. Female voices. They identify as women, as they haven't noticed any off about themselves even in the slightest.

                The only symptom they have in common is that they never have periods.

                One teenage girl only found out due to her class being given a chromosome scan as part of a biology exercise and she surprisingly came up XY.

                I don't see how anyone can make a reasonable case, that this is a man. It's clearly a woman.
                Obviously, such cases are exceptions among exceptions--but they do exist, and would seem to disqualify XY vs. XX as the only deciding factor. That would seem to work for almost all cases, but I think you have to put in an exception for cases like complete androgen insensitivity syndrome.

                Comment


                • Originally posted by seer View Post
                  You know very well that such surgeries and hormone therapies are going on.
                  Of course. And at first you appeared to know why such surgeries and hormone therapies are going on, but now you don't seem so sure.

                  Stoic, can you tell me how many genders there are?
                  No, not really.

                  Comment


                  • Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post

                    Let's go with this, because I agree.

                    Progressives, by definition, can NEVER come to a place where they say "OK, we have achieved our goals, and can hold the status quo". NEVER.
                    If that's a way of saying that progressives never feel that the status quo is perfect, I agree.

                    Conservatives are probably more likely to feel that the status quo is good enough, and that a change is likely to make things worse. And they probably aren't always wrong about that.

                    Because they are 'progressives', they have to always push further and further.... The whole "gay rights" thing was about equality.... then it added transexuals, then "queers", then the gender confused, then... what's next?
                    I'd say that anything that isn't self-destructive and doesn't hurt anyone else is fair game.

                    It will always get loonier and loonier until somebody stops and says, "hey, wait --- we have gone WAY off the rational....". (That person becomes a conservative )
                    I think you may have something there. The more things change, the more the conservative ranks swell and the progressive ranks thin out. Then things may settle down until a new generation decides there hasn't been enough of an attempt at improving things lately.

                    Comment


                    • Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post
                      But the loony left nutters have made it "popular" to be gender-confused. Even trying to foist it on young people who would never have had a problem with it.
                      Any examples of that?

                      Comment


                      • Originally posted by Stoic View Post
                        No, not really.
                        Why not? So there are more than two genders? What are they, are they always changing?

                        Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                        Comment


                        • Originally posted by Stoic View Post
                          That has nothing to do with the definitions of "man" and "woman"
                          Of course it does, people see a clear distinction between a man and a woman.


                          Perhaps you have no rational reason to change the definition, but medical and scientific professionals do.
                          Actually no, unless they want to be politically correct. A man who thinks he is a woman is a man with gender dysphoria. There is no medical reason to call him a woman.
                          Last edited by seer; 06-24-2022, 01:06 AM.
                          Atheism is the cult of death, the death of hope. The universe is doomed, you are doomed, the only thing that remains is to await your execution...

                          https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jbnueb2OI4o&t=3s

                          Comment


                          • With regard to gender identity, strangely, people identify either as men or women. Where is this gender spectrum thingy in evidence?
                            1Cor 15:34 Come to your senses as you ought and stop sinning; for I say to your shame, there are some who know not God.
                            .
                            ⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛
                            Scripture before Tradition:
                            but that won't prevent others from
                            taking it upon themselves to deprive you
                            of the right to call yourself Christian.

                            ⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛⊛

                            Comment


                            • Originally posted by Stoic View Post

                              The existence of transgender people doesn't mean there aren't also people with psychological problems.
                              In the cases listed, a distinction with hardly a difference. Both want to be something they aren't. The biggest difference is one group gets encouraged and even applauded for their delusions.

                              I'm always still in trouble again

                              "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                              "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                              "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                              Comment


                              • Originally posted by Cow Poke View Post

                                But the loony left nutters have made it "popular" to be gender-confused. Even trying to foist it on young people who would never have had a problem with it.
                                5 year old Billy: I'm an astronaut!

                                Society: That's nice.

                                5 year old Susie: I'm a princess!

                                Society: That's nice.

                                5 year old Fred: I'm a robot!

                                ​​​​​​​Society: That's nice.

                                5 year old Susie: I'm a unicorn!

                                ​​​​​​​Society: That's nice.

                                5 year old Johnny: I'm a girl!

                                Society: Schedule the surgery!

                                ​​​​​​​

                                I'm always still in trouble again

                                "You're by far the worst poster on TWeb" and "TWeb's biggest liar" --starlight (the guy who says Stalin was a right-winger)
                                "Overall I would rate the withdrawal from Afghanistan as by far the best thing Biden's done" --Starlight
                                "Of course, human life begins at fertilization that’s not the argument." --Tassman

                                Comment

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