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Re: Article 13 and Article 11

Posted: Thu May 02, 2019 1:00 pm
by Minos
brimstoneSalad wrote: Wed May 01, 2019 2:50 pm
Thanks for clarification, with this context, I agree.

Re: Article 13 and Article 11

Posted: Fri May 03, 2019 8:28 am
by teo123
OK, @brimstoneSalad, I've found some time to carefully read your last few posts here. Let me ask you a few questions:

You didn't respond to me asking you "Where do you draw the line between those who decide what people are allowed to say and those who can't decide that?". Do you think that people who work at Google or Facebook are somehow more qualified to do that than I am? Why?

If I correctly understand you, you want it to be illegal to say you are a Nazi, right? So, how is people being afraid to say they are a Nazi different from people in Croatia being afraid to say what they think of the Croatian government?

The study you linked about the Croatian education system says, without arguments, that the Croatian employers think that schools spend too much resources into teaching foreign languages. Is there any evidence of that? Croatia is a popular tourist destination for people all around the world, and it's obviously beneficial if employees speak the native languages of at least some tourists (not every foreign tourist in Croatia speaks English, yet alone bothers to learn some Croatian).

Why do you say I should believe the truth about Vukovar, rather than what makes me happy? Truth cannot be known with certainty, and we live only once. So, why should we spend the limited time we have trying to determine what's true, instead of trying to be happy? It would be different if the truth could be known with certainty, as it is with God (which is logically inconsistent due to the omnipotence paradox). But when it comes to Vukovar, we inevitably need to deal with soft sciences to find the truth.
OK, maybe it's sometimes a good thing to die for your ideology, since everybody needs to die one way or the other. I don't think I'd be ready to die for my ideologies of anarchism or veganism, though.

What do you mean by comparing me coming up with my theory about what the names mean with a child drawing a unicorn with crayons? It takes a lot more effort, and a different kind of effort, to come up with a linguistic theory you can publish peer-reviewed papers about than to draw a unicorn with crayons, right? It's, at worst, comparable to drawing a unicorn with crayons hundreds of times, and then sharing the picture you are most satisfied with.

Don't you think that fully understanding the LCS algorithm is about the same thing as coming up with it by yourself? The skills you need to recognize the right solution are the same skills you need to come up with a solution, right?

Do you think it's OK for the schools to force students who don't believe in Vukovar to sing songs about it?

When do you think can linguistics be used to contradict historical sources? Can it at least be used to contradict, for instance, Constantine Porphyrogenetus writing that "Croatia" means "land" in Old Croatian and that it comes from Ancient Greek "khora" (land)? You are saying using linguistics to prove that some story is mythological is not a valid argument.

Re: Article 13 and Article 11

Posted: Fri May 03, 2019 10:47 am
by teo123
If I touched that soft-science-vs-hard-science thing in my last post, sorry, that wasn't really my intention. Though, when I think about it, I can see how it can relate to the hard-science-soft-science issue.
To argue about history, you need to use the very soft parts of linguistics. You can't use phonetics and phonology to deduce something relevant to history. You need to use historical linguistics. Sometimes, you can use the hard parts of historical linguistics, like the relationships between languages (to debunk the Tower of Babel and other similar myths). But that's not what's going on here, here, to prove that some story is mythological, you need to use, well, parts of linguistics that border with philology, and these are very soft fields. Even etymologies of the names are, as far as I know, nobody before me even tried to make a mathematical model of them. And philology tries to deduce things from those etymologies, so it's even less certain than the etymologies are, and there are, as far as I am aware of, literally no mathematical models in philology.

Anyway, you say you'd probably be embarrassed by your knowledge of agriculture, right (that even a hillbilly would know more than you do)? Well, the knowledge of agriculture is very important when arguing for veganism, isn't it? It's a very common myth that farmed animals are needed to fertilize the ground.

Re: Article 13 and Article 11

Posted: Sat May 04, 2019 4:23 am
by brimstoneSalad
teo123 wrote: Fri May 03, 2019 8:28 am You didn't respond to me asking you "Where do you draw the line between those who decide what people are allowed to say and those who can't decide that?".
You're confusing politics and ethics.

Politically: It's their platform, they can allow or not allow on it what they like.
Ethically: the people who are right should be in the position to decide. However, since we can't guarantee that will happen, see the political answer.
teo123 wrote: Fri May 03, 2019 8:28 amDo you think that people who work at Google or Facebook are somehow more qualified to do that than I am? Why?
Yes, and that should really be obvious. They're more mature, better educated by far, come from a more progressive cultural context, and they didn't recently convince themselves the Earth was flat.
teo123 wrote: Fri May 03, 2019 8:28 amIf I correctly understand you, you want it to be illegal to say you are a Nazi, right?
No.
teo123 wrote: Fri May 03, 2019 8:28 amSo, how is people being afraid to say they are a Nazi different from people in Croatia being afraid to say what they think of the Croatian government?
Nazis are wrong. People critical of the Croatian government are very likely right (not when those critics they deny massacres, but of other problems which are well known by experts).
teo123 wrote: Fri May 03, 2019 8:28 amWhy do you say I should believe the truth about Vukovar, rather than what makes me happy? Truth cannot be known with certainty, and we live only once. So, why should we spend the limited time we have trying to determine what's true, instead of trying to be happy? It would be different if the truth could be known with certainty, as it is with God (which is logically inconsistent due to the omnipotence paradox).
Not all gods are omnipotent.

Why not believe in the Norse gods and Valhalla? Particularly as alien visitors with technology so advanced it seems like magic to us mortals.
If it makes you feel good?

teo123 wrote: Fri May 03, 2019 8:28 amIt's, at worst, comparable to drawing a unicorn with crayons hundreds of times, and then sharing the picture you are most satisfied with.
Sure, drawing a hundred unicorns then, if you want.
teo123 wrote: Fri May 03, 2019 8:28 amDon't you think that fully understanding the LCS algorithm is about the same thing as coming up with it by yourself? The skills you need to recognize the right solution are the same skills you need to come up with a solution, right?
No. See the thread on whether computer science is a science.
teo123 wrote: Fri May 03, 2019 8:28 amDo you think it's OK for the schools to force students who don't believe in Vukovar to sing songs about it?
Depends on if it's a good song or not. It's historical fact, so it's appropriate as part of the curriculum. Not much different from a song about the solar system. Or is singing just banned because somebody might not like it? Like a flat-Earther might take issue with singing about the planets, so we shouldn't do it?
teo123 wrote: Fri May 03, 2019 8:28 amWhen do you think can linguistics be used to contradict historical sources? Can it at least be used to contradict, for instance, Constantine Porphyrogenetus writing that "Croatia" means "land" in Old Croatian and that it comes from Ancient Greek "khora" (land)? You are saying using linguistics to prove that some story is mythological is not a valid argument.
You can use linguistics to argue against a claim about linguistics. It doesn't matter if the claim was from today or a thousand years ago. However, you shouldn't try to use linguistics to say the claim was never made. People in history can make mistakes. Constantine may have just been wrong.

Re: Article 13 and Article 11

Posted: Wed May 08, 2019 1:28 am
by teo123
brimstoneSalad wrote:Politically: It's their platform, they can allow or not allow on it what they like.
And where do you draw the line there? I suppose it's OK for a radio not to host extremists, since radio hosts are actually expected to choose whom they talk to.
But is it OK that the WeChat app blocks (I don't know if it stll does that, but it allegedly used to) messages mentioning Winnie the Pooh, because somebody in the company behind it came up with a ridiculous idea that somebody mentioning Winnie the Pooh is probably poking fun at the way Mao Zedong looked, and they are offended by such jokes? What, the app uses their servers to deliver the messages, so why shouldn't they be allowed to program it to block certain messages (most of which are not even intended to be politically sensitive)?
And suppose a private company owned a square in the capital. Is it then OK for them not to let people they disagree with to be on that square? Because I think that's quite the right analogy here.
Do you think it was OK for Twitter to ban The Amazing Atheist for comparing radical feminism to sexism?
brimstoneSalad wrote:the people who are right should be in the position to decide.
I am not at all sure that's the case. Is it OK for most of the people not to even be aware that the extremists exist?
brimstoneSalad wrote:come from a more progressive cultural context
What does that mean?
brimstoneSalad wrote:If it makes you feel good?
Well, it's quite hard for me to convince myself that a God exists, even if many studies show people who believe that tend to be happier (or perhaps it's the other way around). But it's quite easy to convince yourself that Vukovar didn't happen.
brimstoneSalad wrote:Sure, drawing a hundred unicorns then, if you want.
Do you mean to say it takes a lot less effort to come up with a soft science theory you can publish peer-reviewed papers about than to do the same thing in a hard science? I can see why that would be true for gender studies (since many journals and conferences about gender studies are actually hoaxes, and publish whatever nonsense is submitted to them), but I don't see why that would be true for linguistics. In either case, you need to know a whole bunch of stuff that isn't taught in high-school, or even at the university.
brimstoneSalad wrote:See the thread on whether computer science is a science.
As far as I can see, there is nothing related to it there.
brimstoneSalad wrote:Depends on if it's a good song or not.
Do we agree it's not OK that schools force students to sing songs about Jesus?
brimstoneSalad wrote:You can use linguistics to argue against a claim about linguistics.
So might a creationist say that you can use biology to argue against a claim about biology, but that you can't use biology to argue against theology.

Re: Article 13 and Article 11

Posted: Wed May 08, 2019 1:09 pm
by teo123
Anyway, the study you cite mentions South Korea as an example of a good education system. Where does that come from? South Korean schools are widely criticized for being insanely hard, and for teaching no skills that would help students later in life, or even making students understand the curriculum properly.

Re: Article 13 and Article 11

Posted: Sun May 12, 2019 12:44 am
by teo123
Does anybody here have an idea, why would the Serbian soldiers during the Massacre of Vukovar obey the commands? I just don't see it. They basically had two options:

1. Don't obey the commands:
a) (most likely scenario) be killed by a fellow Serb.
b) somehow escape, and be praised later as a hero.

2. Obey the commands:
a) (most likely scenario) you die in the battle, and somebody you don't know ends up dead because of you.
b) somehow survive the battle, knowing that you will later be seen as one of the bad guys, since Serbia obviously had no chance of winning the war.

It seems like a no-brainer to me that, in that situation, you should not obey the commands.
I mean, this whole story seems so incoherent to me. Like, how could Slobodan Milosevic create such a mass hysteria of killing people of other nations? And how could he manage to convince even some ethnical Croatians to join his army (during the Srebrenica massacre)? Don't people see what they are doing, don't they hear the screams and the begging, don't they realize they will be punished for doing that?
I mean, I've studied social sciences quite a bit, and this whole thing seems as inexplicable by reason to me as a massive conspiracy.

Re: Article 13 and Article 11

Posted: Tue May 14, 2019 2:43 pm
by brimstoneSalad
teo123 wrote: Wed May 08, 2019 1:09 pm Anyway, the study you cite mentions South Korea as an example of a good education system. Where does that come from? South Korean schools are widely criticized for being insanely hard, and for teaching no skills that would help students later in life, or even making students understand the curriculum properly.
Most of the philosophical conversations we have here involve a broad knowledge on topics that wouldn't be useful to most people in the job market.
Most people barely need to understand any math, don't need to know any of a second language, don't need education in the humanities etc.
It probably doesn't make a difference to their jobs for most people to not even know the shape of the Earth.

You can argue that trade school is all most people need, and that may be true, but it's irrelevant to the topic here. Stop making straw man arguments teo, you're changing the definition of a "good education system" mid-stream and referring to something irrelevant to the issue at hand.

Maybe a good education system in the sense of having breadth and depth of subject matter of human knowledge is actually a practically bad one. Totally off topic. Start a new thread if you want to complain about education.
teo123 wrote: Sun May 12, 2019 12:44 am Does anybody here have an idea, why would the Serbian soldiers during the Massacre of Vukovar obey the commands? I just don't see it. They basically had two options:

1. Don't obey the commands:
a) (most likely scenario) be killed by a fellow Serb.
b) somehow escape, and be praised later as a hero.

2. Obey the commands:
a) (most likely scenario) you die in the battle, and somebody you don't know ends up dead because of you.
b) somehow survive the battle, knowing that you will later be seen as one of the bad guys, since Serbia obviously had no chance of winning the war.

It seems like a no-brainer to me that, in that situation, you should not obey the commands.
Of course they should not if they were moral, fully informed, and rational.
They also would have deserted the army a long time before that if that were the case.

You seem to be laboring under the delusion that all people are fully rational agents possessed of perfect knowledge. :lol:
Soldiers are not only misinformed by propaganda, but are also acting under psychological pressures of group thinking and essentially Stockholm syndrome for their commanding officers. They're conditioned into obedience step by step, and don't normally even consider that they have a choice at all.
teo123 wrote: Sun May 12, 2019 12:44 amDon't people see what they are doing, don't they hear the screams and the begging, don't they realize they will be punished for doing that?
I mean, I've studied social sciences quite a bit, and this whole thing seems as inexplicable by reason to me as a massive conspiracy.
These are questions of human psychology, and they aren't explained by the soldiers' reasoning. There are some evolutionary explanations for these things if you're interested in it.
It's not like a conspiracy: with a conspiracy ONE rational person can blow a whistle and ruin everything. Armies contain rational people who balk at unethical orders and desert, but one deserter doesn't ruin the whole thing as long as most are going along with it.

Re: Article 13 and Article 11

Posted: Thu May 16, 2019 7:57 am
by teo123
brimstoneSalad wrote:Most of the philosophical conversations we have here involve a broad knowledge on topics that wouldn't be useful to most people in the job market.
Doesn't it seem to you that primary schools, middle schools and high schools, when teaching science, for every topic, either they don't teach it at all, or they teach students just enough for them to get into trouble? I have been taught some thermodynamics in high-school. And if I haven't, if I happened to know absolutely nothing about thermodynamics, I wouldn't have come to the conclusion that bombs contradict the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
brimstoneSalad wrote:You seem to be laboring under the delusion that all people are fully rational agents possessed of perfect knowledge.
Well, that's almost always the assumption behind the research in economics, and is the usual assumption behind the research sociology and sociolinguistics, isn't it? I mean, the perfect knowledge is sometimes being replaced by what are thought to be better models, but people being fully rational agents is still almost always assumed, right?

Regarding the freedom of speech, do you think that people being interested in what's forbidden doesn't play a significant role? If people know anti-vaxxers are forbidden, wouldn't that just make them even more interested in what they have to say?

Re: Article 13 and Article 11

Posted: Thu May 16, 2019 4:03 pm
by brimstoneSalad
teo123 wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 7:57 am Doesn't it seem to you that primary schools, middle schools and high schools, when teaching science, for every topic, either they don't teach it at all, or they teach students just enough for them to get into trouble?
The goal is to get them interested in the subjects so they'll learn more later, and ideally so they'll be better voters (like understanding the basic science behind climate change and understanding it to be real).
teo123 wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 7:57 amI have been taught some thermodynamics in high-school. And if I haven't, if I happened to know absolutely nothing about thermodynamics, I wouldn't have come to the conclusion that bombs contradict the 2nd law of thermodynamics.
Most sensible people know bombs exist, and just assume they misunderstood something about thermodynamics. It results in confusion which they may or may not choose to resolve by learning more (hopefully they do learn more, confusion is a major motivator in curiosity).
Mot people don't resolve that their high school educations in thermodynamics were so perfect that any confusion about bombs must mean bombs don't work.
teo123 wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 7:57 am
brimstoneSalad wrote:You seem to be laboring under the delusion that all people are fully rational agents possessed of perfect knowledge.
Well, that's almost always the assumption behind the research in economics,
I explained how there are two sides to economics:
1. The ideal of what rational agents will do
and
2. The psychology of how people fall short of that (typically based on historical data)

The reality is somewhere between that, because corporations usually act closer to ideal rational agents than humans. A lot of humans working together in a systematic way, particularly the well educated and intelligent psychopaths who often lead corporations and act as their legal teams, can eliminate for the effects of normal human bias.
The smaller the company, the more human it is and the less predictable its behavior.
teo123 wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 7:57 amand is the usual assumption behind the research sociology and sociolinguistics, isn't it? I mean, the perfect knowledge is sometimes being replaced by what are thought to be better models, but people being fully rational agents is still almost always assumed, right?
No, it's just the only thing we can model perfectly. It's a model we know to be untrue in certain ways. You start with a rational agent, then you modify the behavior based on known deviations.
teo123 wrote: Thu May 16, 2019 7:57 amRegarding the freedom of speech, do you think that people being interested in what's forbidden doesn't play a significant role? If people know anti-vaxxers are forbidden, wouldn't that just make them even more interested in what they have to say?
The Streisand effect. No, that has to do with failed attempts to suppress information (typically by civilians), not successful ones.
There's no good evidence that laws against holocaust denial (for example, as a relatively long standing policy in many European countries) have had any such effect. Likewise, Chinese censorship has been pretty successful. It's not perfect, but the inhibiting force just needs to exceed the proliferating force to reach a lower equilibrium.
We do know that people don't usually seek stuff like this out but when they are exposed to certain messages, particularly fear mongering as in the case of anti-vaxx, some will believe them. It's arguably better to inoculate people against these beliefs with education, but it's much more expensive than simply keeping these messages off major platforms.