I look at this as a sign of society evolving. Subtle emotional traumas exist, micro-aggressions exist. Way more things are harmful to children than we are really aware of. Mental health issues scale smoothly from 'nonexistent' to 'makes you completely nonfunctional' and can't be easily separated from 'ordinary' personality. Society was not-so-blissfully unaware of these aspects of life, this is the process of coming…
How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm
41–50 of 157 posts
Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm
#42Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I don't disagree with the general thrust of your argument, as an aside, the lack of men in nursing roles (and teaching, especially to younger children) is seen as a problem and when you spend time in the nursing or teaching community it comes up a lot. Campaigns to attract more men into these professions have been running for a long time. While I'm here, speaking as a townie, I don't see any complexity in the f…
Now I'm wondering whether you are a vegetarian, or whether you pay others to kill animals for a few minutes of eating pleasure.
Cats injure, torture, and play with their prey before killing it. Humans should not do that.
Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can view women as a group or tribe, competing against other groups or tribes, or you can view each person as an individual with one of the characteristics being gender. This distinction results from a poor understanding of what you call the "collectivist view". This approach does not view a social group as a constructive set -- a tribe as you call it -- but as an empirical, emergent set. The idea is that certai…
> Either women statistically have common goals or they don't (they do) Like what?
Then again these goals are common with men also.
Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm
#44I suspect a large part of this is down to 1. People defaulting to the nuclear option constantly, in their reactions, and 2. People not wanting to accept that some issues are complex, and that a blanket approach doesn't work. The latter of these is the real issue. People love being outraged over the lack of women in STEM fields, and how those that are are treated, but few people talk about the lack of men in teaching…
> As a different example, you could look at the issue of badger culls it fox hunting in the UK. The most outspoken people against both aren't from the countryside, have never kept cattle or been on hunts, don't understand (or want to think too much) about the issues involved, but know that badgers and foxes are cute. So I'm guessing you are from the countryside and you think its ok to hunt foxes and badgers? Just to…
Re. badgers, my problem is that the work that's been done on the trial culls has been so badly managed that it's hard to say one way or the other whether it's working or not. Quarantine and cattle culling in Wales seems to be having a positive effect on TB spread, but at huge economic damage to farmers.
Re. foxes, my issue there is that the hunt ban is an awful piece of legislation, that neither protects foxes, nor helps those who have have dozens of hunt dogs. I'm fine with either legalising it (it's not a great past-time, but there's far worse and it's an effective way of controlling fox populations in localised areas), or with banning it (there's other ways to keep populations in check, although none are humane).
My issue is with town and city folk who didn't grow up in the countryside not understanding that it's land which has to be managed.
Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm
#45Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, what you described is a pure meritocracy and all things being equal, that would be GREAT, unfortunately, all things are not equal. If all people got equal encouragement, inspiration, and opportunity (from the moment of birth) then we could simply focus at the moment of judgement (which btw, is also currently biased [1]). So that is basically what STEM advocates are working on, making sure women and other disadva…
"Furthermore this bad luck is not statistically independent of various other characteristics" Right, so that's not bad luck. That's systemic bias.
What makes correlated bad luck somehow something to be eradicated (above and beyond ordinary bad luck)?
Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm
#46Earlier quoted context omitted.
Now I'm wondering whether you are a vegetarian, or whether you pay others to kill animals for a few minutes of eating pleasure.
I'm not a vegetarian, and I gladly pay others to kill animals for me to eat. But I do not pay for the animals to be tortured in the process; I want them killed as quickly and painlessly as possible. Cats injure, torture, and play with their prey before killing it. Humans should not do that.
Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, what you described is a pure meritocracy and all things being equal, that would be GREAT, unfortunately, all things are not equal. If all people got equal encouragement, inspiration, and opportunity (from the moment of birth) then we could simply focus at the moment of judgement (which btw, is also currently biased [1]). So that is basically what STEM advocates are working on, making sure women and other disadva…
You're right that it's biased, but perhaps not in the way you think it is: http://www.pnas.org/content/112/17/5360.abstract > The underrepresentation of women in academic science is typically attributed, both in scientific literature and in the media, to sexist hiring. Here we report five hiring experiments in which faculty evaluated hypothetical female and male applicants, using systematically varied profiles disgui…
"Encouraging everyone equally is great".
We should probably just end the argument on that point we both agree :). The rest will work itself out. If everybody was encouraged and inspired equally and there were still imbalances your point will remain. Unfortunately, that's not true today, so we won't know.
Iran and India have much higher representation of women in STEM fields, and while they have other issues with misogyny, the inculcation of ambition (across gender lines) is very high (I say that having lived in India). The result seems to contradict any "biological" predilections.
But we'll see.
Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You can view women as a group or tribe, competing against other groups or tribes, or you can view each person as an individual with one of the characteristics being gender. This distinction results from a poor understanding of what you call the "collectivist view". This approach does not view a social group as a constructive set -- a tribe as you call it -- but as an empirical, emergent set. The idea is that certai…
> Either women statistically have common goals or they don't (they do) Like what?
For example, statistically and empirically women get sexually assaulted and harassed more than men. Statistically and empirically, then, issues relating to sexual harassment/assault laws matter affect the lives of women more than men.
For example, statistically and empirically, women get paid less than men for doing the same job. Therefore, statistically and empirically women are more interested in pay-equity laws.
Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm
#49I suspect a large part of this is down to 1. People defaulting to the nuclear option constantly, in their reactions, and 2. People not wanting to accept that some issues are complex, and that a blanket approach doesn't work. The latter of these is the real issue. People love being outraged over the lack of women in STEM fields, and how those that are are treated, but few people talk about the lack of men in teaching…
The problem is that we're meant to believe everyone's opinions are equally valid. Empirically, it seems to me, some people are just manifestly stupid and/or incompetent.
Re: How Americans Became So Sensitive to Harm
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I don't disagree with the general thrust of your argument, as an aside, the lack of men in nursing roles (and teaching, especially to younger children) is seen as a problem and when you spend time in the nursing or teaching community it comes up a lot. Campaigns to attract more men into these professions have been running for a long time. While I'm here, speaking as a townie, I don't see any complexity in the f…
While it is seen as a problem, the point is that it's not taken seriously enough than the opposite imbalance. There are way worse examples: Male students are getting a whole one level worse marks than female students with the same knowledge [1] (Czech). Theoretically, each parent has an equal right to the custody of the child when they separate. In reality, with a whooping 85-90% the custody is resolved according to…
Your point #2 (along with other reasons for a child to more commonly live with a single mother, e.g. the father isn’t known, is in prison, or runs off) partly explains your points #4 and #5. From the document you cite, 27% of abuse victims were living with a single mother and another 5% were living with their mother and another adult, while only 3% were living with a single father. If you only look at children living with both parents, it looks like either parent could be the abuser with approximately equal likelihood. Looking at the source document, your claim #5 seems to be a complete misinterpretation of the data, but in any event, the largest cause of fatalities is “neglect”, and most fatalities were in children under the age of 3.
More generally, I suspect a significant proportion of children spend substantially more time with their mothers than their fathers, e.g. because fathers are more likely to work, tend to work longer hours when both parents are working, and do much less housework and childcare. I suspect these disparities are even more prevalent if you restrict your examination to households where child abuse occurs.
If you want to understand child abuse by parents, you should try to gather concrete data about the family structure and other context. Aggregate statistics about which parent is more often the aggressor can be misleading without considering those other factors (most relevantly here, who the primary caregiver is).
Interpreting this document to imply that children are at much greater danger from women than men is disingenuous, or sloppy at best.
Similarly for your point #3. What is the context for the “attacks” you are talking about? Gang violence? Bar fights? School bullying? Muggings in dark alleys late at night? You don’t cite a source, so it’s not clear quite what you’re referring to.