The Battle Bar, Our Wretched Hive of Scum and Villainy

I still say Jade Empire was their peak

Originally posted by Eminence
Are you no longer doing your apprenticeship?

edit: Kudos, anyway. You've never struck me as being one of them, but I know that a few people here could really use that critical thinking course. Never taken a philosophy class, so no comment there, but if this is your first in-depth exposure to psych, that should be fun.

Philosophy can be interesting. You should take a class or even explore it via autodidacticism, the latter I imagine you've already done to some extent.

Also, Blax, you'll probably have the most "fun" with abnormal psych, if you learn about it. Well, at least that's what I enjoyed the most.

Intro classes aren't the best way to decide if you like a subject. Anything you think you like, go talk to the professor about what higher level classes are like! And anything you think you don't like, go talk to the prof about what higher level classes are like!

Intro to logic was actually a good class. Intro to philosophy was a bunch of insecure man children trying to sound intelligent.

For all X, if x knew something DS didn't know AND x is younger than Rand Paul, then x is a pseudo intellectual.

No, a pseudo intellectual is someone who takes an intro to philosophy class in order to regurgitate the bullshit at a coffee shop conversation in order to appear smarter than he really is.

Originally posted by psmith81992
No, it does not necessarily mean he did something. It could just as well have been a defense mechanism response. Without proof that he did something, I'm going to have to disagree until there is proof.

Not doing something was the entire point for calling him out. He was not thinking about a set of given circumstances (which may be called "privileges"😉 that contributed to getting him where he is. He was not asked to throw those "benefits" out of the window or apologize for them, just to think about them and be cognizant of the fact, that people lacking those "privileges" might have it harder in life.

But how does he react? Instead of wasting a single moment with something resembling self-reflective thinking, he jumps up and drafts an essay that, instead of exploring the "privileges" in question - being a "white male" that is - completely ignores those and looks at the certainly not-so-nice parts of his family history. The irony? It can be found here:

"It’s been made clear to me that education begins in the home, and the importance of parents’ involvement with their kids’ education—from mathematics to morality—cannot be overstated. It’s not a matter of white or black, male or female or any other division which we seek, but a matter of the values we pass along, the legacy we leave, that perpetuates “privilege.” And there’s nothing wrong with that." [Source]

So he realizes, that education begins with the family, but manages not to draw one single conclusion from that very observation. And that guy managed to get into one of your elite universities? Good god.

In case you don't get the point: There is a pretty high number of children who never experience that kind of education at home. And I can't imagine parents that don't want educational or economical success for their children. Once that latter thought popped up in your head, you may want to think about the question, why some children don't experience this form of "private education". There is a multitude of answers to this questions and scarcely few involve some form of "guilt" on the side of the children that the "privileged child" is compared to. Do you now spot the reason for demanding recognition of once own privileged upbringing?

In case you still don't get the point, look at the privilege to participate in discussions in this very forum. Privilege? Yeah. Quite so. Obviously, you need to be capable of reading and writing to do just that - 775 Million people on this planet can't do either (2/3 of whom are female). But actually, your computer is a far greater privilege, considering ownership of one puts you in advantage of 88 percent of all people on this planet. Your internet connection is an even better example, though. Only 3 percent of all people on this world own a PC with internet connection.

You may want to take a step back and consider how much of an advantage that last point is. Consider the wealth of information accessible to you within seconds, ranging from news to wikipedia articles. You can carry the knowledge of the world in your pocket in the guise of a smartphone. Compare that to some rise farmer in Asia, who may never have seen a single book in his entire life.

And if that isn't extreme enough for your taste: Imagine to grow up as a girl in Nigeria, where some nice people from an organisation called "Boko Haram", might just kidnap you, because they think girls are better off getting married than going to school. An opinion that might lead to a situation, in which you are sold into slavery at the age of 12. Maybe you realize, that quite a lot of the "success" you have in life is dependant on being born at the right time and place. Which is a dramatic increase of your chance to go to Princeton instead of having to work 14 hours a day under inhuman conditions for less than a dollar.

Uh.. Yea if you have the stats handy for that assertion, i'd like to see them.

There you go. And I have to say, that I seriously wonder about your level of ignorance, when it comes to such rather common topics.

Right, but if said person did nothing to instigate such a request, then he is justified.

Being privileged without recognizing that fact is what led to the request.

If a person does nothing to warrant hostility and required to acknowledge his lot in life, then I find those that question that person ridiculous and moronic. Apparently being rich is enough to warrant hostility. Not even rich, but well off, good family, "privileged" I guess. If the kid did something to instigate his hostility, then I would agree with you. But if the hostility was nothing more than a response to his "luck", then those people are tools.

I wonder where you - and that guy - spot hostility in the advice to "check your privilege". It's not a demand to feel ashamed or midiocre, because you had certain advantages in life, that other people missed. It's not a command to reject those advantages or apologize for them. It's a plea to be cognizant, not only of your privileges, but of the disadvantages that other people suffer - and, maybe, a request to help fight that kind of injustice.

I'm not denying privilege exists, I'm simply stating that one need not acknowledge it if there isn't just cause.

You shouldn't need a special cause to think about who you are, where you come from, and how your backstory influences and shapes the way you perceive things, your thinking, your actions - and your way of living. Because that impact can be far greater than you may think.

In the meantime, the acknowledgement of such privileges might lead to the recognition of / discussion about certain social imbalances and - as a result - a change correcting them. Which might be a benefit for society as a whole.

on a sidenote

No, a pseudo intellectual is someone who takes an intro to philosophy class in order to regurgitate the bullshit at a coffee shop conversation in order to appear smarter than he really is.

I seriously wonder, whether the US educational system is so different from the one in Germany, that stuff like this actually works.

"Intro" level courses in philosophy over here feature introduction to the theory of science, critical theory, normative ethics, epistemology, practical philosophy and the philosophy of language (all in seperate courses) while the general "Intro to Philosophy" is more or less a history lesson on the subject. And I daresay an individual who has passed those aforementioned introductions has a greater insight to human thinking than most people, if that is what you consider "being smarter".

You could also go and carefully read Daniel Kahneman's "Thinking, Fast and Slow" of course...

That aside: Generally, unnecessary technical terms are seldomly well received. When you season your seminar papers with them, you will get them slapped right back into your face. Even in philosophy the general rule is to keep things simple and "understandable for everybody". And, usually, most people that study the subject follow that rule.

Originally posted by psmith81992
ME3 is just unbelievable. The amount of things you can do. The humor. Good god what a game.

I have to say that I missed the exploration parts that ME1 had to offer and hated the almost obligatory multiplayer part - especially, when I wanted to replay the game recently...

Not doing something was the entire point for calling him out. He was not thinking about a set of given circumstances (which may be called "privileges"😉 that contributed to getting him where he is. He was not asked to throw those "benefits" out of the window or apologize for them, just to think about them and be cognizant of the fact, that people lacking those "privileges" might have it harder in life.

So he realizes, that education begins with the family, but manages not to draw one single conclusion from that very observation. And that guy managed to get into one of your elite universities? Good god.

In case you don't get the point: There is a pretty high number of children who never experience that kind of education at home. And I can't imagine parents that don't want educational or economical success for their children. Once that latter thought popped up in your head, you may want to think about the question, why some children don't experience this form of "private education". There is a multitude of answers to this questions and scarcely few involve some form of "guilt" on the side of the children that the "privileged child" is compared to. Do you now spot the reason for demanding recognition of once own privileged upbringing?

In case you still don't get the point, look at the privilege to participate in discussions in this very forum. Privilege? Yeah. Quite so. Obviously, you need to be capable of reading and writing to do just that - 775 Million people on this planet can't do either (2/3 of whom are female). But actually, your computer is a far greater privilege, considering ownership of one puts you in advantage of 88 percent of all people on this planet. Your internet connection is an even better example, though. Only 3 percent of all people on this world own a PC with internet connection.

You may want to take a step back and consider how much of an advantage that last point is. Consider the wealth of information accessible to you within seconds, ranging from news to wikipedia articles. You can carry the knowledge of the world in your pocket in the guise of a smartphone. Compare that to some rise farmer in Asia, who may never have seen a single book in his entire life.

And if that isn't extreme enough for your taste: Imagine to grow up as a girl in Nigeria, where some nice people from an organisation called "Boko Haram", might just kidnap you, because they think girls are better off getting married than going to school. An opinion that might lead to a situation, in which you are sold into slavery at the age of 12. Maybe you realize, that quite a lot of the "success" you have in life is dependant on being born at the right time and place. Which is a dramatic increase of your chance to go to Princeton instead of having to work 14 hours a day under inhuman conditions for less than a dollar.

There you go. And I have to say, that I seriously wonder about your level of ignorance, when it comes to such rather common topics.

Being privileged without recognizing that fact is what led to the request.

I wonder where you - and that guy - spot hostility in the advice to "check your privilege". It's not a demand to feel ashamed or midiocre, because you had certain advantages in life, that other people missed. It's not a command to reject those advantages or apologize for them. It's a plea to be cognizant, not only of your privileges, but of the disadvantages that other people suffer - and, maybe, a request to help fight that kind of injustice.

You shouldn't need a special cause to think about who you are, where you come from, and how your backstory influences and shapes the way you perceive things, your thinking, your actions - and your way of living. Because that impact can be far greater than you may think.

In the meantime, the acknowledgement of such privileges might lead to the recognition of / discussion about certain social imbalances and - as a result - a change correcting them. Which might be a benefit for society as a whole.

That aside: Generally, unnecessary technical terms are seldomly well received. When you season your seminar papers with them, you will get them slapped right back into your face. Even in philosophy the general rule is to keep things simple and "understandable for everybody". And, usually, most people that study the subject follow that rule.

"God doesn't exist but if he does, let me be arrogant enough to describe him in human terms".

"God doesn't exist because of all the human suffering. If he did, there wouldn't be any, because I'm apparently attaching my own mortal beliefs to an omniscient, omnipresent being".

I have to say that I missed the exploration parts that ME1 had to offer and hated the almost obligatory multiplayer part - especially, when I wanted to replay the game recently...

I may have missed something. Who is telling that kid to check his privilege? Is it a professor of his that keeps saying it, or is there like a plaque or something above the door to one of his classes that he walks by everyday and it pisses him off?

I'm just getting a very weird vibe from Nai and to a lesser extent, Janus.

I may be wrong but it seems to me that their belief is that the poor are poor from events entirely out of their control, and the privileged are privileged because of fortuitous circumstances, and they should for some reason, acknowledge that they're privileged without being asked. So there's no personal responsibility, or hard work, or anything, just "socioeconomic forces". I certainly hope I'm wrong because this is a pointlessly naive attitude.

What I'm getting out of all this is that some privileged douches don't like it when someone tells them that they are in fact privileged, and instead want pretend that everything they have is due to their own hard work and owe nothing to the fortunate lot they were given in life.

What I get out of it is that those that aren't privileged don't like the fact that others are privileged and call the person out on being privileged. This line of thinking is based on their being no evidence of the kid's douchey attitude or provocation.

But yes, there are a huge chunk of rich people that are rich by circumstance, and poor people who are poor because they're lazy.

My position is that good luck probably plays more of a role in people being rich than bad luck does in people being poor. People can be rich due to good fortune, hard work, or a combination of both, and vice versa with people who are poor. I just get the impression that far more often than not, people who are poor probably had the ability to not be poor by simply working much harder.

I agree to a certain extent with that statement. People fall through the cracks all the time and others get lucky all the time. There is no measurement of who is more or less deserving of success. But to imply that poor people are poor beyond their control and rich people are simply "privileged" is a little naive.

I'm gonna try to just pop in and not get involved further, but maybe this is an appropriate distillation of the argument, DS: most rich people are rich because [a given set of circumstances] happened to work in their favor; most poor people are poor because [those same circumstances] did not work in their favor, or furthermore, happened to work against them. The un/disadvantaged (even relatively: compare the gripes of ~85%ers about "the rich" with ~35%ers about "the rich"😉 are aware of this and are reminded of it everyday. The advantaged? Generally speaking, not so much.

Is that clearer? More agreeable, I hope?

I had honestly never heard of "check your privilege" before this whole fiasco. My gut reaction to it was that (taken in a vacuum) it's a pretentious and probably unproductive way of trying to remind someone that they might be missing some very important parts of the bigger picture. That said, I agree one hundred percent with the sentiment that people should be encouraged to deeply examine themselves and their backgrounds so they understand why they stand where they do relative to others. And I think that kid's kind of a whiny, self-absorbed *****. But I also feel for him, this spotlight is a little much for what's basically semi-articulate ignorance.

Again though, the introspection being requested concerns things that are relative, and this comes much more easily when you're looking at something someone else has that you don't. For example, I wanted to be six-five when I was a little kid*. Oh well, tough shit. But at least I'm not five-seven. Whatever insecurities I struggle(d) with being in the 70th (or whatever) percentile height-wise are probably amplified in the 30th, and you also get what I imagine (and have come to understand better, because I have me some dear short people) to be a slew of new problems.

Spoiler:
**** you, Blax.

I'm gonna try to just pop in and not get involved further, but maybe this is an appropriate distillation of the argument, DS: most rich people are rich because [a given set of circumstances] happened to work in their favor; most poor people are poor because [those same circumstances] did not work in their favor, or furthermore, happened to work against them. The un/disadvantaged (even relatively: compare the gripes of ~85%ers about "the rich" with ~35%ers about "the rich"😉 are aware of this and are reminded of it everyday. The advantaged? Generally speaking, not so much.

Is that clearer? More agreeable, I hope?

I had honestly never heard of "check your privilege" before this whole fiasco. My gut reaction to it was that (taken in a vacuum) it's a pretentious and probably unproductive way of trying to remind someone that they might be missing some very important parts of the bigger picture. That said, I agree one hundred percent with the sentiment that people should be encouraged to deeply examine themselves and their backgrounds so they understand why they stand where they do relative to others.

Originally posted by psmith81992
What I get out of it is that those that aren't privileged don't like the fact that others are privileged and call the person out on being privileged.

I think we are in agreement with the idea that the kid is whiny due to his own ignorance (faunus' words), but I don't think this is the argument. It appears that the argument is based around whether or not the privileged should acknowledge their statuses or rather, if the less privileged are justified in demanding said acknowledgement without provocation.

Originally posted by psmith81992
I think we are in agreement with the idea that the kid is whiny due to his own ignorance (faunus' words), but I don't think this is the argument. It appears that the argument is based around whether or not the privileged should acknowledge their statuses or rather, if the less privileged are justified in demanding said acknowledgement without provocation.

As to the second part I don't feel people r justified in demanding the acknowledgement or expecting them to apologize for their good fortune. But I understand their want for said acknowledgement.and I don't see asking for it as being out of line.

I was fortunate enough to be born into a privileged life and if asked I would acknowledge it happily. if some1 demanded it of me I'd tell them to f off. But that goes for basically anything. if u ask for a slice of my pizza, it's yours, shit I'll give u 2. if u demand a slice then screw u.

What's ur take?