I’ve absolutely, definitely met people IRL that have argued in exactly the way I outline. …Although “argue” is charitable, since they’re just haranguing their victim subject. I’ve also known plenty of people that claim that they know they aren’t going to change the mind of the person they’re verbally assaulting–because people can’t change, I guess?–but that they want to win the hearts of the people observing. …Which they also aren’t doing, since they’re appearing to be mean-spirited to observers. (And yes, there’s nuance here, and I still firmly believe in punching Nazis.)
David McRaney has been talking for a while about what actually works for changing the way people think and believe (and he just recently published, “How Minds Change”), and Anthony Magnabosco has been posting street epistemology videos on YouTube for years. Both of them have found–to be really reductive–that you need to emotionally connect with the person you’re talking to, and you need to ask open-ended questions that allow them to consider the foundations for their beliefs.
And to your point, yes, that’s hard to do online. I get it. I often fall into the trap of arguing instead of being empathetic. So I need to take my own advice.
No; adjunct faculty can also rightly be called professor without having achieved a doctorate. I’ve had a few professors that had BAs and MFAs (esp. since I’m not sure that there are PhD programs for fine arts).
I was being serious. She made art history–which is normally a fairly dry subject, particularly when you’re covering art before 1100CE–a really fun and engaging subject.
While it is true that there was inexpensive housing available in the USSR, and that rents were quite reasonable compared to anything that currently exists in the US, and people couldn’t readily be evicted if they lacked the ability to pay, it’s a flat-out lie to say that that was the “solution” to homelessness, or that it eliminated the problem. Rather, the USSR criminalized being homeless and not being engaged in socially-productive labor; people that were homeless ended up in prisons and were labelled as parasites. The problem that we have now is that the official records simply didn’t record the problem, in much the same way that Stalin had histories and photos revised to eliminate people that had become enemies of the state.
…You’re really saying that one party where you have no functional choice is better than a multi-party system, just because you think that Republicans and Dems are too alike, while ignoriing the plethora of other parties that not only actually exist in the US, but hold office at local and state level?
The problem with China being that it’s authoritarian, not that it’s capitalist or communist. There’s no choice other than the Communist Party, so when the party is wildly corrupt, you have no recourse at all short of revolution. And we all know what China does to counter-revolutionaries.
…And yet, the Enterprise is armed. If power does not come from the ability to effectively use violence, but from some other means, then why would the Federation arm it’s flagship?
Aside from an episode of Strange New Worlds (and possible in Wrath of Khan, depending on your perspective), space pirates aren’t brought up as a risk to the Federation starships, presumably because they usually aren’t. Shields alone should be sufficient for debris and asteroids, since shields appear to stop physical objects as well as certain forms of energy (obvs. not certain bands of light though, or whatever bands their sensors use). Non- and quasi-sentient species shouldn’t pose any risk to a starship at all (aside from possibly omniscient comets, thank you Stanislaw Lem). The weapons on a starship are appropriate to direct against planetary settlements, bases, and other starships.
Fundamentally, I believe Mao was correct on this; the ability to use violence effectively is the lowest common denominator for all power. Everything else is a veneer of civility intended to disguise the violence that is inherent to all forms of coercive rule.
I don’t think that the issue is that people don’t know; people don’t care. They don’t understand how horrible the loss of privacy is, and think that the marginal convenience of being able to control your thermostat from your workplace, or have your refrigerator add milk to your shopping list outweighs the negatives of them being turned into botnets, or monetizing all of your data to squeeze every last penny out of you.
If it wasn’t for the fact that the BATF has decided that simunitions are too dangerous for civilians, you could still do this. There’s a company that produces non-lethal ammunition that can be used in certain models of regular firearms–with modifications–so that you can quite safely shoot someone at near-contact ranges. Obviously your long range accuracy is not great. It will break skin, but so will AirSoft.