Scrotie's single-question political compass test

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1453R написал:

I also maintain that a more general education is an excellent way to improve oneself. Even just basic courses in world cultures/religions, world history, and other similar subjects - no matter how much some folks scoff at the idea of 'namby-pamby sissyman Lib'ral Arts garbage" - can give one a much improved appreciation for the world at large and one's own place within it.

I don't have any problem with people who study the stuff of contemporary American university liberal arts courses. Learning what other people think is important. Or to look at it another way: Target practice to hone one's debunking skills. Unironically worth the price of tuition.

What I have a problem with is people who go through years of such content convinced on every single point, never raising critiques for class discussion, never finding a single point of irreconcilable dissent. Or, worse, professors who expect not their students' understanding of the content, but their acceptance of it -- and who grade accordingly.

A good liberal arts education doesn't tell you which are truths and which are lies, it arms you with the tools to discern that for yourself.

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ScrotieMcB написал:

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1453R написал:

I also maintain that a more general education is an excellent way to improve oneself. Even just basic courses in world cultures/religions, world history, and other similar subjects - no matter how much some folks scoff at the idea of 'namby-pamby sissyman Lib'ral Arts garbage" - can give one a much improved appreciation for the world at large and one's own place within it.

I don't have any problem with people who study the stuff of contemporary American university liberal arts courses. Learning what other people think is important. Or to look at it another way: Target practice to hone one's debunking skills. Unironically worth the price of tuition.

What I have a problem with is people who go through years of such content convinced on every single point, never raising critiques for class discussion, never finding a single point of irreconcilable dissent. Or, worse, professors who expect not their students' understanding of the content, but their acceptance of it -- and who grade accordingly.

A good liberal arts education doesn't tell you which are truths and which are lies, it arms you with the tools to discern that for yourself.

I had a professor like this when I was in undergrad and it was pretty terrible. She claimed she liked dissent and suggested we voice disagreement, so I did when she said Hector was being sexist for going to war instead of spending time with his family in the Iliad. I assumed she was provoking someone to argue on purpose since the position was so ridiculous but then she was pretty upset with me for the rest of the class.

edited for content and clarity

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DurianMcgregor написал:

She claimed she liked dissent and suggested we voice disagreement, so I did when she said Hector was not being sexist for going to war instead of spending time with his family in the Iliad. I assumed she was baiting someone to argue on purpose since the position was so ridiculous but then she was pretty upset with me for the rest of the class.

Let me see if I get you: are you saying that it's sexist for an ancient Greek to leave his family to respond to the call for war, and it's ridiculous bait to claim otherwise?

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ScrotieMcB написал:

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DurianMcgregor написал:

She claimed she liked dissent and suggested we voice disagreement, so I did when she said Hector was not being sexist for going to war instead of spending time with his family in the Iliad. I assumed she was baiting someone to argue on purpose since the position was so ridiculous but then she was pretty upset with me for the rest of the class.

Let me see if I get you: are you saying that it's sexist for an ancient Greek to leave his family to respond to the call for war, and it's ridiculous bait to claim otherwise?

Ok, I need to get more sleep. Sorry for the confusion. I must have made some error editing that post. Hector was a prince of Troy. It was not sexist for him to respond to the war according to me but the professor tried to claim that it was. My claim at the time was that the Greeks killed and raped everyone and the characters would all have known that would happen.

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鬼殺し написал:

Polishing point: I'd call it 'provoking' rather than 'baiting' when referring to an academic/pedagogical situation. 'Baiting' skims too closely to needlessly incendiary concepts like trolling. Provocation, on the other hand, is what eduation is all about. You can't teach anyone anything without provoking them to some degree.

Apologies if this seems like nit-picking but I think it's an important distinction, especially here.

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鬼殺し написал:

I dont speak meme.

What do you mean by this? How do you define "meme?"

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ScrotieMcB написал:

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鬼殺し написал:

Polishing point: I'd call it 'provoking' rather than 'baiting' when referring to an academic/pedagogical situation. 'Baiting' skims too closely to needlessly incendiary concepts like trolling. Provocation, on the other hand, is what eduation is all about. You can't teach anyone anything without provoking them to some degree.

Apologies if this seems like nit-picking but I think it's an important distinction, especially here.

I wouldn't be so sure.

There's a difference between provoking someone with the intent to keep provoking until they start spitting fire and shrieking like dick-punched donkeys and provoking someone with the intent to get them actually thinking before seeing where a discussion goes.

Nobody learns much of anything in their comfort zone. Though frankly, I believe Charan might've done better with 'challenging' over 'provoking'. Heh, baiting is right out though, on that we can all agree. Challenging someone's preconceived notions is a critical part of higher education, and should have been a critical part of basic education if our public education system wasn't a dumpster fire.

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鬼殺し написал:

I'm very familiar with the academic concept of 'provocation' as a noun rather than a verb. For a example, lecturers and speakers at symposia/conferences often use the word towards the end of their talks. 'I'll leave you with these provocations' or some-such. Food for thought, might be a good lay term for it as well.

So to go from that as a positive but critical noun to a positive but critical verb isn't difficult. The word is already loaded with good intentions, if you will.

'Challenge' is a little more contentious and combative.

Heh, that tends to be subjective, honestly. Without any extensive academic background, my natural instinct goes the other way - 'challenge' is a neutral term that can be used to imply that one is testing another's beliefs or arguments, or coaxing them into a discussion of said arguments, while 'provocation' reads very much as an aggressive act intending to either dismiss the provoked statements or set them up as inferior to a prepared counterargument.

Not arguing your specific wording, mind. Simply pointing out that language is far from absolute, especially in cases like this one, and specific word choice can often backfire in unexpected ways if people aren't at least slightly careful.

Charan says he doesn't speak meme, but I get more response from him with Flash Season 4 image macros than I get with the Socratic method. It's like when women say they're looking for a nice guy.

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鬼殺し написал:

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ScrotieMcB написал:

Charan says he doesn't speak meme, but I get more response from him with Flash Season 4 image macros than I get with the Socratic method. It's like when women say they're looking for a nice guy.

Sorry, can you please do more MGTOW/incel-style posts about what you think of women? I fuckin' love that shit.

There's nothing distinctly MGTOW/incel about my post. For what it's worth, nice ladies aren't really what the lads are looking for, either. Niceness is overrated.

I despise MGTOW. I don't think all of their talking points are utter nonsense -- I'm an antifeminist in the sense of its contemporary iteration -- but they dwell in the delusion that The Matriarchy is solidly in control of everything, creating an environment of institutional sexism against men. Ironically this is exactly how I feel about the contemporary feminists: yes, there are some misogynists out there, so maybe one could say there is such a thing as The Patriarchy -- but it doesn't posses nearly the degree of pervasiveness or power radical feminists claim. Both represent a sexist identy politics that's so committed to its own persecution narrative that its followers are blind to the vast masses of ordinary non-bigoted (or, to be precise, minimally-bigoted) people in our populations. What MTGOW really is is a misogyny movement fueled by a (mostly) false persecution narrative of feminist dominance.

I do enjoy the YouTube videos of several prominent antifeminists, particularly Sargon of Akkad, but I take them with a grain of salt. Such videos cherry-pick their subjects from a tiny (but vocal) minority, who in the worst cases are then allowed to borrow the megaphone of mainstream-ish media to spread their message -- and those who control that megaphone are also a tiny (but vocal) minority of the general population. While I worry about the potential to normalize radical feminist beliefs (just as I would worry about the normalization of radical MGTOW beliefs) and I support activism to call such people out, I have not made these cherrypicked radicals into my model for how I think most of the left-leaning population thinks. It's obvious from the comment sections of such videos that a lot of people are unfortunately willing to paint all of the Left with that brush, and that is indeed worrying. I get that videos like Sargon's are used as a kind of MGTOW recruiting tool, but that's not really the fault of their creators.

That said, I do think it is fair to criticize the Left in general, normies and all, for being ignorantly neglectful at best and knowingly permissive at worst in regards to their failure to police "their" press when it promotes radicalism. It's much easier for them to ostracize those who bring criticism as "alt-right," regardless of the criticizer's actual politics, than to take any critique seriously. (For what it's worth, MGTOW normally responds the same way, labeling all dissenters as leftist shills or worse.)

Oh, and there's not really any such thing as incels. I thought that was the moral of that Deadpool movie. "No matter how much of a shitshow your life has been, how ugly you are, how edgy your jokes are, or how many people you want to kill, there's someone who, appropriately buzzed, will be happy to sit on your face. You just need to stop stalking like a damn creeper and maximize your effort." I wonder if the writers were targeting the poor fuckers at 4chan specifically.