Posts by bohm

86

Free Speech - Jordan Peterson Debate Live 9:30 EST Saturday

by cofty in

professor jordan peterson of the university of toronto will be streaming a live debate on his youtube channel on the topic of free speech and "bill c-16".. if you haven't heard (where have you been?

) peterson has been making waves by opposing the demands of pc "social justice warriors" at the u of t to use their chosen gender neutral pronouns.

in his judgement proposed "bill-c16" will make his non-compliance illegal - an egregious threat to free speech.. professor peterson is an intelligent and thoughtful academic who has found himself at the focus of attacks from the neo-marxists that are dominating the conversation at elite universities.

bohm

Cofty: Can you make it clear what piece of the legislation you specifically object to?:

As far as I can tell, the Canadian Human Rights Act already grant rights and protected status to quite subjectively defined groups (for instance, religion). What this bill does is to introduce "gender identity and expression" (another subjective criterion) to that list; something which has already happened locally in many Canadian provinces including Toronto.

For instance here is an old version of the purpose of the canadian human rights act pre-C 16:

Purpose
2 The purpose of this Act is to extend the laws in Canada to give effect, within the purview of matters coming within the legislative authority of Parliament, to the principle that all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have and to have their needs accommodated, consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society, without being hindered in or prevented from doing so by discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:K5XrYRtQf8kJ:laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/h-6/page-1.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

How is that doing harm of real significance? Is that really all that bad? (should we be allowed to discriminate against transsexuals in the workplace or for instance incite to genocide against transsexuals?)

Here is the content of C-16:

----

1 Section 2 of the Canadian Human Rights Act is replaced by the following:

Purpose

2 The purpose of this Act is to extend the laws in Canada to give effect, within the purview of matters coming within the legislative authority of Parliament, to the principle that all individuals should have an opportunity equal with other individuals to make for themselves the lives that they are able and wish to have and to have their needs accommodated, consistent with their duties and obligations as members of society, without being hindered in or prevented from doing so by discriminatory practices based on race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, disability or conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.

1996, c. 14, s. 2; 2012, c. 1, s. 138(E)

2 Subsection 3(1) of the Act is replaced by the following:

Prohibited grounds of discrimination

3 (1) For all purposes of this Act, the prohibited grounds of discrimination are race, national or ethnic origin, colour, religion, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, family status, disability and conviction for an offence for which a pardon has been granted or in respect of which a record suspension has been ordered.

3 Subsection 318(4) of the Criminal Code is replaced by the following:

Definition of identifiable group

(4) In this section, identifiable group means any section of the public distinguished by colour, race, religion, national or ethnic origin, age, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or mental or physical disability.

4 Subparagraph 718.‍2(a)‍(i) of the Act is replaced by the following:

(i) evidence that the offence was motivated by bias, prejudice or hate based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression, or on any other similar factor,

86

Free Speech - Jordan Peterson Debate Live 9:30 EST Saturday

by cofty in

professor jordan peterson of the university of toronto will be streaming a live debate on his youtube channel on the topic of free speech and "bill c-16".. if you haven't heard (where have you been?

) peterson has been making waves by opposing the demands of pc "social justice warriors" at the u of t to use their chosen gender neutral pronouns.

in his judgement proposed "bill-c16" will make his non-compliance illegal - an egregious threat to free speech.. professor peterson is an intelligent and thoughtful academic who has found himself at the focus of attacks from the neo-marxists that are dominating the conversation at elite universities.

bohm

Cofty: 0.3% of the world population is transgender. A far larger percentage of the students at elite universities are poseurs. They don't need laws to protect their affectations.

Whether it is necessary to make it illegal to discriminate against a transperson ("sorry we don't hire transsexuals"), or that they need to be protected against hate speech ("kill all trannies") is, in my opinion, a side point. You are free to argue that they should not be a protected group (similar to religion, sex, ethnicity, etc. etc. I think they should if we have such things), but what I am addressing is Jordans claims that the bill C-16 pose an immediate danger to free speech -- which is unrelated to how many actual trans persons there are.

I am simply failing to find a persuasive argument beneath the rhetoric (and there is a LOT of rhetoric in his piece) and I can't help noticing he earns about 5300 a month by talking on this subject.

86

Free Speech - Jordan Peterson Debate Live 9:30 EST Saturday

by cofty in

professor jordan peterson of the university of toronto will be streaming a live debate on his youtube channel on the topic of free speech and "bill c-16".. if you haven't heard (where have you been?

) peterson has been making waves by opposing the demands of pc "social justice warriors" at the u of t to use their chosen gender neutral pronouns.

in his judgement proposed "bill-c16" will make his non-compliance illegal - an egregious threat to free speech.. professor peterson is an intelligent and thoughtful academic who has found himself at the focus of attacks from the neo-marxists that are dominating the conversation at elite universities.

bohm

Jordan peterson has no legal background and a very direct, monetary interest in playing up the dangers of c16.

As far as i can tell, c16 adds gender and gender expression as a protected category (similar to race, religion, etc). That is, to judge the impact of this Bill on free speech we should ask what we can and cannot say about eg. a persons religion now, which is obviously quite a bit. Furthermore, a very similar Bill is already in place in Toronto and nobody has arrested peterson...

http://sds.utoronto.ca/blog/bill-c-16-no-its-not-about-criminalizing-pronoun-misuse/

i think it is reasonable to ask: without any slippery-slope argument, what is the danger of saying Xir?

86

Free Speech - Jordan Peterson Debate Live 9:30 EST Saturday

by cofty in

professor jordan peterson of the university of toronto will be streaming a live debate on his youtube channel on the topic of free speech and "bill c-16".. if you haven't heard (where have you been?

) peterson has been making waves by opposing the demands of pc "social justice warriors" at the u of t to use their chosen gender neutral pronouns.

in his judgement proposed "bill-c16" will make his non-compliance illegal - an egregious threat to free speech.. professor peterson is an intelligent and thoughtful academic who has found himself at the focus of attacks from the neo-marxists that are dominating the conversation at elite universities.

bohm

Professor Peterson is an intelligent and thoughtful academic who has found himself at the focus of attacks from the neo-Marxists that are dominating the conversation at elite universities.
If all of this is a mystery to you have a look at his channel and do some research on recent events. Free speech is under attack from Authoritarian PC activists.

I watched his video and quite frankly, I think there are bigger and more obvious democratic threats at the moment than a bunch of blue-haired kids who wish to be called "xir" in Canada.

That free speech is supposedly under threat in Canada because of the change to legislation is very much his interpretation of the relevant legal texts, and his argument that him being "silenced" (eh what? Is he not having a public debate?) because of actions of his university is very weak: It is common that universities have a stricter code of conduct than the rest of society, for instance, you can be fired or reprimanded for conduct that would not meet the legal standard of harassment.

On the other hand, on the most positive interpretation, a very sizeable portion of the US electorate is positively being trolled by organized troll news outlets and live in an information bubble where they can't take informed decisions because they believe fundamentally false things. Worse yet, according to US intelligence, this was partly orchestrated by Kremlin.

I think Peterson is doing his best to drum up controversy on this particular subject because he understands that there is a huge audience who wish to be scared and outraged of the SJW boogyman (I think it should be dubbed "outrageporn" or "outragebait"). In fact, the SJW boogyman is both very rare, and without elaborate arguments not very scary. If Donald Trump wanted me to call him "they" I would just shrug or laugh, however, I am not laughing at the idea of creating a national database and doing mass registration (violating the first and fifth amendment). Where the heck is the "don't want no gun database" crowd?!

In fact, the SJW boogyman is both very rare, and without very elaborate arguments not very scary. If Donald Trump wanted me to call him "they" I would just shrug or laugh, however, I am not laughing at the idea of creating a national database and doing mass registration (violating the first and fifth amendment).

By the way, the analysis that the "crazy left" is the reason people voted Trump in his other video is exactly the same kind of argument that the crazy left uses when someone confronts them with examples of "crazy left" behavior ("oh yes they are rioting and that is not right, BUT THAT IS BECAUSE...").

25

Entertainment: What's everybody reading or into right now?

by schnell in

i picked up bernard cornwell's the pagan lord at the library.

historical fiction set in england after the death of alfred the great.

i'm loving it, especially the between-the-lines wit and sense of timing in cornwell's writing, and the complete badassery of the protagonist.

bohm

I am watching the chess world championship when I can and otherwise I have begun to play a bit on lichess.org.

103

Sam Harris on Trump - The Most Powerful Clown

by cofty in

harris is at his incisive best in his latest podcast.. he likens the situation to being on an aeroplane where the pilot has died and somebody with no experience of flying has grabbed the controls.

we should all be committed to his success.

prize for the best line goes to - "caligula with a iphone".. even if you love trump and despise harris you should appreciate his clarity.. waking up with sam harris....

bohm

Trump is what you get when you try to force the majority to suppress their common sense and believe impossible things.

This might be true in a causal sense, but it is simply saying that Trump supporters act in the same way as those they criticize...

The worst a blue-haired idiot on tumbler can hope to accomplish is creating institutional problems at Yale that can eventually be fixed in the legal system if they are actually unlawfull. That's a whole other ballgame than promising to fuck with the constitution...

103

Sam Harris on Trump - The Most Powerful Clown

by cofty in

harris is at his incisive best in his latest podcast.. he likens the situation to being on an aeroplane where the pilot has died and somebody with no experience of flying has grabbed the controls.

we should all be committed to his success.

prize for the best line goes to - "caligula with a iphone".. even if you love trump and despise harris you should appreciate his clarity.. waking up with sam harris....

bohm

SBF:
Gad Saad supported Trump. Murray refused to say if he supported Trump but said he opposed Clinton. I don't know about the rest, where did they stand?
It's amazing you'd hold up as admirable a list including people who supported Trump. Why does the world need more voices of people who are so confused in their moral thinking that opposing Trump is not a no brainer for them?

You won't like this comparison, but Sam Harris has a phrase that if you can't stand up to radical islamism and condemn it without 'but's, that's failing a moral litmus test.

Supporting Donald Trump is IMO such a test. I can't understand why it is not black and white clear that a candidate who so openly says he WILL erode constitutional rights and institutions is not fit to be president, issues that are unaffected by whatever mean things the supporters of the other candidate might say.

133

Election Post-Mortem

by Simon in

i'm sure many people, republicans included, are shocked at the results of the 2016 presidential election.

really, wtf!.

the polls were wrong and although it's tempting to blame voter suppression and fbi interference, that would just avoid looking at the real issues for the loss.

bohm

JeffT: Could the reason that the media was fact-checking Trump more than Hillary be that Trump is more dishonest than Hillary?

Regarding the emails, yes, I agree it is a bad story. I have to deal with protected data as part of my job and the precautions that have to be taken are quite clear. However, on the scale of things, how does the potentially improper configuration of an email server scale up against a candidate wanting to change the freedom of speech so as to allow him to sue newspapers that print bad stories about him?. Quite frankly, that is the kind of behavior I associate with dictatorships (and only dictatorships) and implies a serious violation and disregard of the US citizens constitutional rights to a free press.

Imagine for a moment that Hillary had toyed with the idea of changing libel laws so as to silence discussion of her email server...

133

Election Post-Mortem

by Simon in

i'm sure many people, republicans included, are shocked at the results of the 2016 presidential election.

really, wtf!.

the polls were wrong and although it's tempting to blame voter suppression and fbi interference, that would just avoid looking at the real issues for the loss.

bohm

garyneal: I notice that you did not question the bit about sexual harassment. Donald trump has on several occasions suggested policies including surveillance and the creation of a database of Muslims, as well as the proposal that they could not enter the country. That is violating the US constitutions' guarantee of equal protection of religious expression and the first amendments clause about freedom of religion.

I hope you understand that suggesting the creation of a database of US citizens based on their religion is not the same as limiting immigration of non-US citizens.

Sigh. Rather than engage in ideas you go off on the attack. Just like a regressive leftist.

The use of these cute labels to identify the in and out group (racist misogynist homophobic white man or "regressive leftist"/SJW) would appear to exactly fit my diagnosis of the problem in my previous post.

As to not having elected a dictator: The US could have elected Putin and he would not have been a dictator by definition, that's not the issue.

The issue is that next president is going to be a person who flirts with the idea of limiting the freedom of the press (specifically, change legislation so that he can sue newspapers who write bad stories about him) and put his political opponents in prison. Are those values reflecting the US constitution and democratic system in your opinion?

133

Election Post-Mortem

by Simon in

i'm sure many people, republicans included, are shocked at the results of the 2016 presidential election.

really, wtf!.

the polls were wrong and although it's tempting to blame voter suppression and fbi interference, that would just avoid looking at the real issues for the loss.

bohm

JeffT: In your opinion, if a TV station ran stories about Donald Trump proposing that the united states commit warcrimes and violate several articles of the united states constitution (including but not limited to a limitation of the freedom of the press and imprisonment of his political opponents) as well as bragging about what amounts to either sexual harassment or sexual assault, would you then consider that TV station as being "biased"?

On this topic, since we have had what seems like three months of non-stop talk about the configuration of an email server, I am just wondering what you would consider as being an appropriate amount of time to spend on each of these views and actions by Donald Trump?.