>>77255
>The Ambient Belonging paper experimentally demonstrates a situation where exclusionary signals deter people from joining a group.
Correct. It mentions that further research connected the signals that detered women to gender stereotypes.

>That is the problem caused by sexual humor in a conference. Expressions of sexuality are not egalitarian; they tend to be skewed toward men's interests.
No, not really. Again, feminism woud love to paint women as frail and humorless, but it's not true. It's just those feminists who are frail and humorless.

And this certainly doesn't apply to innocuous dongle jokes.

>A sexual joke from the peanut gallery is a reminder of this part of the culture.
Yes, I see. After playing the game Cards Against Humanity at the same conference, a language game where you put together sentences like *these*, a joke about big dongles is what reminded Adria Richards of this horrible sexual culture.
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I've been busy with life for a while, but I have a bit more time now. It also gave me time to do some research.


Rape statistics

>>77258
>[A few paragraphs of unsupported assertions omitted]
>They prefer theories that society encourages an epidemic of violence and sexual violence against women to the reality of extremely negative media and public responses to rape and violence against women, the special punishments for perpetrators and protections for victims of rape, the broad legal definition of rape, the fact that in prison rapists are in line for abuse right after child molesters (often in the form of rape, ironically), and of course the fact that men are the majority victims of sexual violence and violence of all other kinds as well from physical assault and homicide to workplace death to death on the battlefield.

Your Gish Gallop does not impress me. Perhaps you'd like to pare it down to a real claim that you can support with evidence. The theories are true in spite of the negative opinions and harsh penalties for rape. When people don't recognize rape for what it is, opinions and laws about rape do not solve the problem. Rapes outnumber military casualties by orders of magnitude, yet you feel the latter is more important because a larger fraction of military casualties is male. Your petty indignation over how someone else's social problem gets attention is one of the things MRAs are despised for.

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>>77831
Not all bias is irrational.

Speaking as a rape survivor, all I've ever wanted from the people that've hurt me was to understand what they did, feel remorse, reconcile and move on to be a better human being that doesn't rape anyone again.

I don't see why that has to be a tall order.

>be normal person
>be falsely accused
>no rights
>face plastered over media
>reputation ruined
>wrongfully convicted
>balls chopped off

>>77646
a good 'punishment' would include some jail time and empathy training as mentioned something similar in >>77731


A good way to do this in the US prison system is to make them feel desperate and remove all companionship ties, let them stew like this for about 3 weeks then introduce a (of the gender that was raped) counselor for them to identify and bond with. This counselor must have some experience or training in dealing with rape situations.

Ideally the prisoner forms a bond with this person whom they respect and seems to be there to help better them. This person eventually reveals to them that they are a rape survivor/counselor and to reveal this at a time that would be emotionally unselltling to this prisoner (wait, this person I like so much, who is so nice to me, who I actually get to relax when I am around, was raped or deals with rape survivors!?!?)

Once an emotional response or internal conflict becomes verified by observation, rehabilitation can begin. Though the prisoner might need at least 48 hours to process the revelation.

In my mind a more perfect scenario puts rape victims/victim supporters/counselors in direct contact with prisoners whom are encouraged by a number of factors to bond with these people. These people can be their trainers (emotionally, empathetically, and to rehabilitate)and should remain under careful protection that is NOT obvious to the prisoner. It must be very discreet and surprise in case they should get 'rapey' again.
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In the United Kingdom:
-You have to be 18 to buy a drink
-You have to be 16 to drink non-spirit alcohol with a meal (assuming someone else ordered it)
-As long as you are over 5 then there is no law against you consuming drink on private premises. So children and young teenagers are perfectly allowed to have a drink at home, and they don't even really need an adult to be present (no silly police raids on house parties).

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_drinking_age

Therefore the responsibility for children and young teenagers lies with the parents, which I think is good. Presumably, if the young person ended up drinking so much they had to go to hospital then the parent would be prosecuted for negligence. That all seems very reasonable to me.

The point is, you can "learn to drink" from quite a young age. I think a drinking age of 21 is absolutely ridiculous; and criminalises casual drinking for no reason. Under the British system, assuming you have responsible parents, you might start drinking a little bit at the age of about 13, and by the time you're 18 and legally allowed to buy your own drinks you're perfectly capable of going to the pub and having a few pints without shitting yourself over the excitement of actually tasting alcohol.

To put the difference between Britain and America into perspective - my school (a boarding school) had a bar. It was open to the two most senior years on Tuesdays and Saturdays, and the most senior year only on Fridays. You were allowed in if you were 17 or over, and until you turned 18 you had to have a meal with your drink (so there was always some food down there too which wasn't too bad at all). The idea was that the bar - it was called the JCR (Junior Common Room) - was an opportunity for the students to blow off steam and have a few drinks under the school's supervision, rather than sneaking off into town and trying to get served at a public place.

>>77826
I wish the US was as sensible about intoxicants as some other countries.

Giving your kid wine at the dinner table in some circles would probably get child protective services called on ya in the US.

Hell people call CPS over children who are outside playing. Playing outside. its reasonable suspicion of a crime in the US.

>>77824
I think the younger you expose children to the effects of alcohol and the more this is done in controlled family settings, the better 'intoxicated teen' you will end up with.

The U.S. paranoia over young people drinking alcohol is more evidence that the state owns our youth more than our youth own themselves. Remember we were founded by puritans and the religious lobby has a huge hand in our policymaking. They care more about making laws by their funder's moral and ethical mongering via a perception of religion than they do about being sensible in regards to intoxicants.

>>77823
That is a really tough question. We should probably first examine the age of actual sexual activity/consent in youth to get a nice idea of where we should start addressing the consent issue.

And that age seems to be around 13-14. Unusually low for lawmakers.

In the US the lawmakers essentially say your body does not belong to you it belongs to the state until you are X years old and then you are allowed to own your body for the sake of having intimate sexual experiences.

Its an interesting question, though. At what age are you old enough to decide that your body is okay to have sex and with someone of your choice? I'll point out this seems to be a largely human concept. The bonobos do not put age barriers in their interactions (which are quite sexual and casual). Otherwise a creature may not express it is sexually available without hormone and pheremones and some kind of other advertisement.

>Should there be allowances or at least reduced punishments made based upon the relative ages of the participants?

Yes but also if both parties appeared quite consensual I see no need to punish excessively or label the 'offender' as a predator for life as we do in the US. Some legal recourse may be in order and I'm cool with that - but it should not too much more than reiterate what is not okay for society. No need to have this guy raped and constantly under the threat of murder in a US prison for five years. (I say guy because largely the women are not punished as men are for the same offense).…

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>quints
>on /dis/
and nothing of value was earned

>just noticed quints
nice GET

I checked 'em.

Okay first off, I take issue with some of the numbers chiefly used here. "Greater than 4%?" So, what? 4.1%? 89%? 27.6831%? They're leaving a huge amount to the imagination with that wording, right off the bat.

So yeah it's an interesting statistical projection, however one thing it seems to indicate to me, is that the doubt instilled by the imposition of the death penalty seems to lead to the detection of more false convictions than otherwise. Ten times more defendants on death row are exonerated than those on a life sentence. So while I am opposed to the death penalty for a number of reasons, it does seem to provide impetus for weeding out innocent cases, even if it doesn't find all of them.

unfortunately law is a completely subjective system, so no matter what we do or change there will always ALWAYS be incorrect convictions, as well as incorrect exonerations. at the end of the day, in any jury-based case it comes down to the opinions of twelve people, and how they interpret the case laid out before them, and there will always be capacity for error in it, and some of that error will never be detected.

>>77808
if you look at the study (I assume you didn't have time or something) it says with a great deal of certainty 4.1% if not greater.

This sets the minimum bar for predictive analysis, but not the maximum - yet it also calls this a 'conservative estimate'.

If you want to check their math & supporting evidence you can do so here.
http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2014/04/23/1306417111.DCSupplemental/pnas.201306417SI.pdf#nameddest=STXT

Here is an excerpt from the last part of the study. The formatting is screwed up so I am going to show/hide it just because its unkempt

Our research adds the
disturbing news that most innocent defendants who have been

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>>77810
yes i read the study. i'm just somewhat concerned that such a statistically-minded study decided that "greater than 4%" was the best way to word their findings. i can't say i understand all of their methods but it certainly seems like to me, with my limited knowledge of statistics, that they could have fairly easily given a statement of something along the lines of "greater than 4% and 95% percent likely to fall within x range."

Anyway, I also stand by my other point (which the study also points out repeatedly), that the death sentence seems to be the strongest motivator to uncovering false convictions. As I said, their study cites that it's more than ten times more like for a false conviction to be discovered on death row than otherwise. However, yes it is very disturbing that the 36% moved from death row to a life sentence are effectively abandoned, despite the likelihood that some notable percentage of them are innocent.

On the other hand, if 4.1% are wrongly convicted, and 1.4% of those are exonerated, that means that the system works with 97.3% accuracy, at least in death sentence cases. I know you can't really break things down to statistics when dealing with unnecessary loss of human life, but for a system like law, that strikes me as some impressively high accuracy.

Despite all that, I am still very much opposed to the death penalty, for various reasons, including the botched executions you also mentioned in the OP.

>>77783
It strongly depends on where you live and how much money you have saved up in my mind.

It also depends if you are male or female. Weighing risk of divorce percentage vs what kind of risks that divorce will more than likely introduce to your life for the rest of your life (including financial obligations until your child turns 18 and such) makes me think that unless you could be living comfortably in a post-divorce scenario with monthly child support taken out of your income, then you cannot afford to have children (as a guy).

Raising a child to 18 years (not including any unexpected expenses which will of course happen, and not including college savings or anything after 18) broke the 200,000$ USD mark four years ago (also in the UK, more than 200,000 of those little L things with the line through them).

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/06/09/raising-child-born-in-2010-costs-more-than-200000-report-finds/

If you look at the economic situation in your country over the past ten years you might be able to project where it might be over the course of your child's life, and of course your own.

You might want to evaluate what you see as the 'real risks' such as child predation or some such and try to estimate if it really is a likely threat or just a sensationalized one.…

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>>77783
If you want kids and there's no obvious reason why you shouldn't (ie. you're not lazy, violent, a criminal, addicted to drugs, broke, etc) then of course you should! Kids give you purpose, joy, and support in your later life.

I don't buy the whole ethical thing of not having kids because of overpopulation. Unless you live in a third world country with an exploding population, overpopulation is probably not an issue where you live. Even if it was, your having one or two children would not do a thing to stop that.

However, there are lots of orphaned children out there in desperate need of parents and loving families. Now that is an ethical reason to adopt. If you want to adopt, then do it, sir, and I will cheer you on from afar.

If you're worried about your kids getting kidnapped or murdered, then work your butt off and earn the money to live in a nice neighbourhood. And teach them to say no to strangers.

But you need to find a wife too ;)

>>77802
£?

Ethically speaking it's wrong no matter you look at it, simply because no animal is intelligent enough to give meaningful consent. Even the smart ones like dolphins or chimps aren't at the same level as an adult human.

>>77798
speaking from experience, i can tell you that cows certainly notice when you stick your arm up their ass, and their vagina is much more sensitive than that. The procedure you described is done as part of artificial insemination, because the semen used is much less motile than fresh semen, it needs a little encouragement to make it's journey, and because the cow's rectum runs essentially parallel to their reproductive tract, you can sort of massage it along the tract with your arm up their ass.

as a standpoint on how this is justified vs bestiality, i would argue that this procedure is done under very carefully controlled conditions, by trained professionals, and all care is taken to ensure that neither the animal nor the operator comes to any harm, and that it is as minimally distressing for the animal as possible. I can't say I know how most cases of bestiality go down, but i would be willing to bet they aren't nearly as carefully controlled in the vast majority of cases, and pose risk of serious injury to both the animal and the human. cows and horses especially are fairly flighty animals, and would absolutely notice someone trying to rape them.

>>77784
I was kind of hoping we could play devil's advocate a little longer while avoiding the mistakes of /mlp/ on the same subject - r/ing folders full of bestiality.

Anyway, wasn't the issue of consent already sorted out? Pic related mods please excuse its title

>>77764
>pedophilia is left of center
>not listing more conventional methods of kinks before that

dude, what is wrong with you?

>>77773
i think what he was saying is because those fetishes are still based around sex, they make more sense to him than fetishes seemingly based around otherwise nonsexual things, like balloons.

but anyway, this thread's about vore, not pedophilia.

I don't know much, but I can sort of understand why people would feel attraction towards it. In and of itself, the idea that something is being devoured, either yourself or you devouring others, is a novel one that arouses some interest.

I'm not sure where the line between interest and sexual arousal is, though. I mean, I've been caught reading a few vore manga, most notably of which was frankenfran, which sometimes contains light vore and/or implied vore. It took a while to really get into that kind of comic book imagery, but once I read a few issues it became sort of like a craving. I felt like I needed to read some vore, at least once in a while, just because it gave me this weird kick that I couldn't get anywhere else.

The vore that I've read has never really been sexual, and maybe that's why I feel as I do about it. I couldn't really say.

yeah they're all fine so long as the latter two don't act on their fetishes in real life. i don't understand their fetishes / sexuality, but that doesn't make them wrong. so long as they aren't hurting anybody, or any animals, they can fantasize about whatever they want.

homosexual: accepted already

For pedo: what constitutes not acting on it? Like accepting the attraction, but not looking for it or embracing it?
or looking up child pornography, masterbating to young boys on the playground, just not raping them.
Is it a feint attraction? Or is it a strong desire?

If it is beyond a feint attraction, I'd call it sick already. Just not wrong.
If it goes further than thoughts (looking up/masterbating to it/...) I'd say it's morally wrong.

Zoophile: as far as fetish is concerned, when it hits on the first stage of pedophilia. Anything before actually raping animals, I can sort f jt down as a weirdo fetish (sick).

>3 guys pony, Pedro and Beatbro.

Highest of lels

Last edited at Wed, Apr 30th, 2014 17:47

Isn't de facto oligarchy one of the human universals?

>>77721
>>77727
It could just be that Princeton is jealous of Harvard and Yale and so made something to tarnish their image and maybe the richest country in the world with the highest population of billionaires isn't actually controlled by them and their special interest/business interest groups, and our votes really do matter and really aren't being marginalized by all the voter restriction legislation.

It could just be that Princeton is jealous. Razor de' Occam don't you think?

>>77722
>>77726
>This is an oligarchy with the trappings of a democracy.

My thoughts exactly. I want to point out that elections can easily be set up so that even while conducted properly, people still have little choice (just don't give them the options).
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Bill Moyers speaks with economist Paul Krugman on a book recently published called "Capital in the 21'st century" by economist Thomas Piketty.

2:28 if you want to skip to Krugman's interview.
http://billmoyers.com/episode/what-the-1-dont-want-you-to-know-2/

important quotations by krugman

>“What Piketty’s really done now is he said, ‘Even those of you who talk about the 1 percent, you don’t really get what’s going on.’ You're living in the past, you're living in the 80's you think that Gordon Gekko is the future... and Gordon Gekko is a bad guy, he's a predator, but he's a self made predator - and right now we're talking about Gordon Gekko's son or daughter. We're talking about inhiereted wealth playing an ever growing role. He’s telling us that we are on the road not just to a highly unequal society, but to a society of an oligarchy. A society of inherited wealth. Patrimonial Capitalism...”

>>77633

Most people have a very poorly developed system of values.

This leads to them valuing something, like a dog, over something like a microbe, with no idea why or any reason to back up their feelings. The 'value' of the dog comes from positive emotional responses, because it's cute and fuzzy, while the microbe only evokes negative emotions or none at all, so it has no 'value'.

This is a very American problem.

As America's system of values, once founded on Christianity, has been attacked we haven't replaced it with anything. Not humanism, which would give leeway on sub-human organisms, or karma, which would prohibit harming anything, or existential nihilism, which would let you do whatever, because nothing matters.

If you don't have the problems others do with the exploitation of macroscopic animals, it's because you don't value them as much, or you value their use to humans more. Be careful, though; if you don't have a reason behind your values, you one day might end up curious as to why people disapprove of exploiting humans. After all, from one point of view we're only macroscopic animals. Why shouldn't the fortunate exploit the disadvantaged?

>>77629
No matter how much we would want to define and quantify the line between ethical and unethical, sooner or later it will boil down to where a certain person draws it according to their beliefs.
Personally, I tend to look at the issue from two points of view: the consciuosness level and the personal relations.

As much as it is hard to quantify consciousness of a creature (IQ is one of the measurements, but it's hardly sufficient), we can, more or less, estimate it bassed on mutual relations. Microorganisms are not conscious, plants are not conscious, insects not really yet, then we have small animals, bigger mammals etc. And the ethical restrictions should be, IMO, proportional to this. This may seem cynical to some people, but I consider it to be the most logical approach.

Personal relations, on the other hand, can mess all this up. Of course if you have a pet rabbit, you'd rather shoot a wild dog to protect it. I grow some plants on my windowsill, and they matter to me more than many animals I don't "personally know". My heart would probably broke if someone cut down the huge birch that grows next to my house.

I am a PhD student in biochemical engineering. I work with fungi, and I grow and destroy their biomass by kilograms. If I was to mourn over all of those microorganisms I have killed with cold blood, I would go nuts.

>But if similar methods were ever applied to macroscopic animals, I imagine the outcry would be extreme and immediate
Well, there are cases like this, and not single ones. Bovine genome manipulations in order to turn them into living bioreactors have been carried out. Besides, what about eugenics? We have been doing this for centuries, to alter genomes of, for example, dog, cow, chicken, etc. by selective breeding.

>>77629
I wonder if there just isn't enough money in it yet.

Also: people are very visual creatures, the microscopic are rather invisible to us. We don't really find many people that empathize with the microbes but we do find them that empathize with larger animals. A few unsightly pictures would probably be all the public needed to be disgusted and possibly involved.

When there is enough money to be made doing it it will be done I'd imagine, unless repressing it makes more money somehow. I'm convinced when the time is right we will get on with modifying larger animals and ourselves in transparent manners to survive unusual climates, like space, mars, the moon, or if things on earth get bad enough maybe even here.

That time feels right around the corner.

>>77729
It's basically claiming that video games are addictive. Yes, it has traits that can trigger addictive mindsets. Especially MMOs. If you have ever seen a Level Up in World of Warcraft, it is a bright glow, a wonderful sound, a message. It gives a feeling of accomplishment and they design it so that it takes more and more time between each of those feelings of accomplishment.

However, it only causes addiction in minds already prone to addiction. If they didn't play MMOs, they would find something else.

Now it is a fact that while playing video games, a lot of people have spikes in emotions. Like you demonstrated, it can cause spikes in aggression, violent mindsets and other negative traits. But pull them away for five minutes and that spike rapidly falls off.

I do know from personal observation that people focused on a game get irritable and angry.

Heck, I get pretty irritable when I play games.

Not like I'll go on a violent crime spree, but don't try to suggest me putting the game down when I wanna finish a level.

>>77733

Doesn't everyone get like that when they're focused on something? If I'm trying to solve a riddle or math problem or crossword puzzle, I don't like getting interrupted. And I get just as pissy from losing at any other kind of game as I do with a video game. I think that's just basic human reaction.

>>77693
They are two very different ways to present a story. I do think a class on the subject would be nice though, if nothing more than to give people who are unfamiliar with comics a new found appreciation for it. There are a lot of good books out there that everyone should at least try to read to see if they'd like to get into it.

I think the problem is when we think of comics, we immediately think of Marvel/DC and capes. And although there are good, well-written or "deep" cape comics, many are simple stories meant to entertain children and manchildren.

We tend to ignore works such as Hellboy or Sandman, or the entirety of European comics (Moebius is the only one I actually know, though).

>>77714
>Moebius
Oh man I've always wanted to read The Incal. It's really expensive on Amazon though.

I can see that as a valid point. There is still sort of that stigma of comics being for kids. I think superhero stuff is really, at least now a days, more about just entertaining everyone and telling a nice story.

>>77704

I hope this works; I'm new to /chan style boards, and the past few hours have been extremely unusual and deeply disorienting.

I thought I'd throw in a few things I came up with while reading your discussion. I may never be back, because I'm not sure I like this style of board, but maybe you will find it interesting.

I spent the summer working with an incredibly intelligent organic farmer in the mountains of Kentucky. I think organic farming, although maybe not where we need to be, is at least a good step in the right direction. Here are a few reasons why.

1. It's more sustainable.

My boss used natural fertilizer, and paid very close attention to his soil. He had years of experience in what he was doing, and he taught me a lot about how he grew plants from the ground up; the idea being that he worked with the soil first, so he could sustain production. He rotated crops, and we killed all our weeds with hoes or mulch, of one sort or another. It worked surprisingly well. I don't know how common this sort of approach is; my sample size is one. But his farm was producing better crops each year. I doubt that's true for everyone.
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>>77706
thanks for sharing your experience! it's very heartening to hear of such a well-run and successful organic venture, and i truly hope that such practices can become more widespread in this country.

however, in terms of scale, i don't really see such operations displacing industrialized monoculture anytime soon, if ever. especially for crops like corn and soybeans, the demand, not just for food but as additives, fuel sources, and other biochemical applications, the demand is just so gigantic right now, there's really no way organic, local operations could conceivably keep up.

as to GMOs, while certainly the most visible alterations are pesticide resistance, because they get all the media coverage and controversy, many more aspects of the organism are being modified as well. gmo crops have been modified to increase yield, nutritional content, disease resistance, their ability to stay in good condition during transport, and numerous others. it's still a young and burgeoning field, and the full scope of it's applications hasn't been fully realized yet.

>>77708 Hey, lookit that! Bookmarking the thread worked! Still not sure if I 'like' /chan boards, but they're interesting, at least.

Yeah,I agree. Food as a fuel is a wonderful idea, and small-scale farming isn't yet going to compete with that. And since we're not actually eating it, I'd say GMO the crap outta it. As I said, the idea is great; I'm just not convinced we really understand the ramifications yet. Only one way to learn, though.

Still, it seems to me that with most technology, there are trends, and one I've noticed over lots of different systems is that they start decentralized, move first towards centralization, and then, when the tech gets better, away again. Take computers; they moved towards mainframes, and then away. Transport, with trains and the highways. The public schools, and the homeschool movement. I'm convinced the internet will do the same, as network topology gets more advanced. You could almost draw a similar analogy for democracy, although what defines a 'working' government is difficult; no country has lasted forever. Yet. Decentralized networks of *anything* have significant advantages over centralized networks; if they can fulfill the required objectives, they're more stable and redundant, and often cheaper. When the tech reaches the point to where it can compete, I think small-scale is the direction we will move; in lots and lots of things.

The internet will, and already is, driving this. We're still figuring out how to fit this giant of communication into our culture, and we're not nearly done yet; VR is coming, and the percentage of people connected is still pretty small. But on centralization; artisan craftsmanship of many things was harmed by the centralization represented by 'big box' stores. Not saying this is bad, mind you. However, some people really do value artisans, and the internet has brought some of that back; by connecting people more closely, marketplaces like Etsy and Ebay have made handcrafting more profit…

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