ummm yes there is logical reasons... it is called human rights and justice and equity. Plus were I in their shoes I would want the same sympathy and compassion extended to me. I feel like there may be two (obviously more) groups of people: those that suffered and think others just need to get over it, like they did and those that suffered and do not want anyone else to suffer needlessly as they did. I have experienced various suffering in my lifetime and I am of the mind that I do not want others suffering needlessly for things out of their control, like race, gender, sexuality, etc. Why is that illogical?

@demifeministgal Guaranteeing human rights and justice and equality is not logical. I can prove just as easily (or with difficulty ) that humans are not deserving of rights and freedom and are unequal. These are not logical positions, they are purely philosophical based on your beliefs.

You can prove for example, that when people are free to make decisions as they please within a constructive legal framework that society progresses faster than when people are being deliberately directed. This is the foundation of all modern liberal democracies.

Suffering is subjective. There is evidence from neurology and anecdotal evidence at this time that indicates that how much you suffer or are happy is a byproduct of the state of your brain, which is amplified by the environment. In other words, how much you suffer is more a product of what you are than where you are. This is why so many rich people are unsatisfied with life and feel that they are suffering. Suffering is a perfectly natural part of the human condition, and there is no way to change that without giving up your humanity.

@Happy_Killbot There is also research depicting that one's environment can literally change the structure of one's brain and so that people growing up in consistent abusive environments or in a war zone can have enlarged amygdalas than the average brain... so what is your point exactly by saying that?

Humans may be unequal aka different but that does not mean people should be denied human rights due to inherent traits out of their control.... mind you criminals need to have some rights infringed upon for the greater good of society, especially if they are violent criminals like serial killers.

@demifeministgal Your example is a false comparison because it only accounts for people in abusive situations. Some people raised in abusive homes go on to live normal lives. Some people raised in loving homes go on to be criminals.

The point is that there is an entire portion of human nature that is idelible, and there is no point trying to make that your goal.

Let's examine this from another perspective. If you aim to minimize human suffering, whould genocide or human extinction be justified?

The logical conclusion is yes. By eliminating human life, even if doing so causes great suffering it would be justified in the long run because it would eliminate all suffering. Negative utilitarianism is not a good goal.

But what about justice and equality? Tecnically anarchy is the most just and free. Anyone can do as they please within their capabilities, including limiting the rights and liberties of others. Thus we have a paradox. The system most free for everyone is the least free for everyone. Equality and equity do not go hand in hand.

Our modern society strikes a balance between the two. Anything that removes the rights and freedom of others is made illegal. When you say you want justice and equality but you support things that do not directly concern you, and you choose to represent them without expectation of reward, you violate their claim to autonomy in the name of equity rather than equality.

@Happy_Killbot They may lead normal lives but many have unnecessary psychological or physical scars in the manifestation of mental illness or physical diseases because of it. They could have had normal upbringings and normal adult lives.

No human genocide would not be logical because it tends to be carried out in violent measures by those in power, which does cause suffering. And other animals would still suffer in other ways so human genocide would not eliminate all suffering.

Well I was specific by saying equity which is distinct from equality.

Just because things are made illegal does not mean said laws are enforced or adhered to... just like workplace discrimination or harassment should not be a thing, since both are illegal, but countless studies and much research demonstrates both are still problems. There is the law and then there is the application, or lack thereof, of the law. What good are laws if they are not followed?

Who's claims of autonomy am I violating? And why would you say that? Since when is being an ally to others violating peoples' autonomy?

@demifeministgal I think you are missing the point of my arguments. I agree with you that someone who is raised under unfavorable conditions will more likely develop psychological wounds, but this doesn't explain why so many people who were raised in favorable conditions are say, highly prone to anxiety and depression. These people suffer because our brains evolved in a chaotic and dangerous environment. They will always suffer because we as a species are evolved to do so.

Here is a quick explanation and critique of negative utilitarianism, 2 minute read.
[utilitarianism.com]

When things like workplace discrimination and harassment happen, it's a product of people failing to act rationally. The victim should immediately report the injustice but they often do not because they empathize with the perpetrator, so they get away. Same goes for the perpetrator who might actively hate the group or person they are harassing.

You have probably seen this picture but I'm going to post it here anyways.

The violation of autonomy is straight forward. You are not the same as the groups or social justice causes you support. Without any motivation or personal benefit to support that group, how can you have any accountability with your support? How can you actually speak for someone when you don't have their subjective experience? If you assume that their suffering is the same as yours, what happens when it is not? If someone wanted your support, how can you verify that you are providing accurate and adequate representation?

There is a reason if you watch youtube or read facebook news as a registered democrat you will get videos with titles like "Stupid things white male conservatives say" and if you are a registered republican you get videos like "Annoying liberals can't use logic" This is because tons of people on both sides do all sorts of dumb things in supporting a cause they do not fully understand, and in doing so they violate the autonomy of others.

@Happy_Killbot My point was that one can have genetic suffering (ie born with a mental disorder) or develop a mental disorder due to a toxic environment or traumatic situation in one's life. Or both.

Actually the majority of people that did not report did not so do because they feared getting fired or nothing would be done to punish the perp so it is pointless to go through the whole process.... revictimization to people that report crimes against them is a very real and sadly, prevalent thing.

In regards to this: how can you have any accountability with your support? In my sociology/criminology courses when we addressed systems of privilege, we learned just how important allyship is. So that, I would not speak for an oppressed minority, I would speak to members of my in-group that are prejudiced... an easy historical example is that slavery in the US was eventually ended due to the white politicians and white leaders and community members that opposed slavery.... also feminism and granting women equal rights was in part, thanks to male allies. There has even been research that frustratingly demonstrates a person is more likely to actually engage with or listen to someone like themselves.... so for example white people, particularily white racists, are way more likely to listen to me and consider my points opposing racism than they are to other visible minorities... similarily men, especially misogynistic men, are more likely to listen to other men when discussing womens' rights.... I have even seen it in action personally... I have a fake male fbook account... and when I made points about womens' rights, even in an angry tone, men would respond and listen to me seriously... whereas when I made the exact same points, be it with a pleasant or rude tone, I was dismissed... silly emotional woman. So I think allies need to use our voices and do our parts to help oppressed minorities.

@demifeministgal Again, I completely agree that people born with mental illness, or those that raised in unfavorable or abusive conditions tend to have mental disorders which increase risk taking behavior, often leading to greater personal suffering. I do not oppose this scientific fact.

I have trouble believing this as a motivation because of two things: Anonymous reporting and difficulty in data collection. The first should be self explanatory, so I will skip it. If we assume that something that will not be admitted is happening in a social situation, how would you accurately and objectively collect that data?

I don't know about you, but I don't really like anecdotal evidence, and self-reported evidence isn't much higher. Social sciences in general bother me because they are less objective than say, physics or biology. The data on this has a huge range, from 25% to 90%. So what are we to trust? If you ask the questions in a certain way, you can make the data say what you like.

While I totally agree that workplace discrimination or harassment shouldn't occur because it undermines productivity by creating a rift between coworkers, whether that is between men and women or women and women or men and men or different races, or within the same race is irrelevant. As an employer I would not want that happening. I do not care however, to try to meet diversity quotas because I am hiring people who are qualified and fit within the company culture.

You make some good points about the importance of allies, I think that maybe you could quantify what you have written into a series of qualifications for someone to demonstrate accountability for the communication of a particular set of social changes that would apply universally.

Having fake facebook accounts violates facebook's community guidelines.

@Happy_Killbot Okay then. I was just trying to emphasize it is not one more so than the other it is nature + nurture, not nature vs nurture.

The funny thing about that critique of social science research is that much (not all) of census data is self-reported as well... as well as other government research.... and that research impacts policies and provides international stats on how each nation is doing... so if we throw out self-reported data/research, do we also throw out census data and govt reports?

The research does mitigate this and tries to ensure it does not ask leading questions.... I have read very open-ended non leading questions in research addressing why people do not report crimes or workplace harassment. It is not realistic to assume everyone is lying either... why would they lie? What would they have to gain? Such research does not provide monetary incentives after all.

The diversity quotas are a band-aid solution to hiring employers' unconscious biases... there is no way in hell the best hires for all the best jobs are white men.... I liked the studies done in this area in an orchestra where the hiring people could not see the interviewee and an even number of men and women were hired... but when the gender of the applicants were known, more men were hired.

LOL okaaay then and you've never violated their guidelines? good for you I guess.

@demifeministgal No actually, I have never violated Facebook's guidelines because I have never used Facebook.

Lying isn't the issue, coercion via calibrated questions, a term I am borrowing from negotiations which means a question or prompt designed to voluntarily extract information.

For example, I could have asked: Does standing up for a social justice cause make violating Facebook's community guidelines acceptable?

This is how real criminal interogation and hostage negotiations work. People just want to be listened to, and you can leverage that to get true or false admissions of guilt or make them feel understood.

You could ask a series of leading questions that subliminaly urge people to respond one way or the other. The easiest way to do this would be to preface questions with emotionally charged statements:

Many women are harassed in the workplace. Have you ever witnessed or suffered harassment at your place of work?

From a scientific perspective this is a terrible question. But even if you remove the first sentence it is still subtly manipulative, because the word "suffered" implies compassion from the survey.

There is a better way to collect data, but it is highly unethical and anti democratic. China has a system of social credit that basically allows them to what they want. You can not lie to this system because the data is automatically collected, and includes people you interact with and places you have been.

To this system you can get an accurate count by analyzing meta data across statistical incurance of the event based on hard data ( video footage, number incarcerated, etc ) to arived at an accurate representation of actual events, which would be good enough to make predictions, not just about how much but also about who was at risk and who will likely violate.

@Happy_Killbot LOL I did not create fake fbook accounts for social justice reasons.... my generation have fake accounts, especially women online.... it is for individualistic reasons, not social justice reasons... so yup it is worth it! It may be difficult to understand why someone would have multiple accounts, if you are not really a big social media user, and are not a private person.

OMG I have NEVER seen anyone compare social science research with coercion or a criminal interrogation! Two VERY DIFFERENT things... have you ever taken a research methods or stats course? Have you ever conducted research? I have done all of that and I guarantee you none of the participants are coerced.... IN FACT, there is options to leave the survey at any moment or one can refuse to answer given questions... the whole thing is controlled by the participant and they have full power to do what they want.... something that criminals or coercion victims do not have. Yikes

well then, I will prefer to rely on the data derived from our system rather than converting to China's system tyvm. XD

@demifeministgal I hope you see the irony in literally everything you just said and did, if not there is no hope.

@Happy_Killbot There is irony in saying research participants are not the same as alleged criminals? And that scientific research with human participants is not as bad, or even comparable, to criminal interrogation and hostage negotiations? Well then, I would say more people would agree with me than your extremist assessment or just bad false equivalence.

@Happy_Killbot I will bring up your points with my online science discussion group to see what they think though.

@demifeministgal No, the irony here is that I specifically told you how someone might go about manipulating someone to extract information, using the facebook thing as an example. This had the effect of manipulating you into divulging additional information.

This method alone is stupid powerful, as you will soon realize if you haven't already.

As far as the coercion and subtle manipulation goes, most of those ideas I got from reading critique of many social research papers and mapping the trend.

@Happy_Killbot You actually did not manipulate me at all.... it is a common occurrence in my generation to have multiple accounts on 1 platform and it is not taboo so I would not have to hide that info and have it manipulated out of me. In fact I volunteered that information initially long before you attempted any manipulation tactics.

@demifeministgal I don't care about your facebook's and what you do with them, I'm just pointing out that it violates their community guidelines and if they get discovered they will and should be deleted, because that opens up the possibility for phishing, scams, and spread of malicious and hurtful content, which is something you are familiar with by your own self admission.

You volunteered that information of your own "free will" but I got more information out of you, that was the manipulation, or maybe I should call it influence because if you do it right people have no idea that it's happening, and as I am now discovering deny it after it has been exposed.

You're not going to believe me no matter what I say, but if you read the book "Never split the difference" by Chris Vos that should paint a clear picture of what went down.

@Happy_Killbot well I was just having a discussion and I am not sure why you go in to discussions with the intent of manipulating people. You did not get any information out of me that I did not freely share.... if you were actually adept at manipulation you would have gotten me to reveal my secrets to you.... I have unfortunately known good manipulators and sorry to say you are not one of them! In any case manipulating others seems like a you problem, not a social science researcher problem.

@demifeministgal That wasn't my intention, it happened organically. Is it really so hard to believe that the best manipulation leaves the victim feeling like they got a good deal? I pointed out that this works because I want you to understand that empathy, especially in this modern world has a dangerous dark side, something you and so many others seem blissfully unaware of.

Empathy is the driving force behind most advertising, a major portion in important decisions, it makes CEO's out of psychopaths and perhaps the single biggest player in every election.

Not a social science research problem? F*** that! Racism, sexism, and homophobia were mortally wounded decades ago. Perhaps to answer your question from the post, the decrease in empathy is a result of the reality that empathy can be used to control and the resulting mistrust leaves people isolated and apathetic.

IMHO this violation of trust is perhaps the most dangerous social problem we face, although largely transparent. This is the psychological root of so many of our first world problems, and if undressed it will destroy our society.

@Happy_Killbot well then you have certainly explained the reasoning behind your reduced empathy... "reality that empathy can be used to control and the resulting mistrust leaves people isolated and apathetic."

@demifeministgal Sympathy and empathy are not the same thing, nor are they mutually exclusive. Just because you know what emotions someone is experiencing does not automatically mean that you need to feel bad for them, and just because you feel bad for someone doesn't mean you know what they are feeling.

Here are some scientific papers that support this view.
[link.springer.com]
[journals.plos.org]

Empathy is by itself value neutral, it can be used to help or to hurt, as is so much of what we do.

@Happy_Killbot mmkay... also quite interesting that you would use a social science research paper to demonstrate your view. Self reporting using likert scales typical social science research methods. heh

@demifeministgal I would use a social science paper because I would expect you to respond to it.

Also note that both of these studies have a hard component to them, for example the second study contained the hard data collected by the computer game they played, which was compared against how the players thought they did afterwards. They all took the same test to determine their EI, which could be deemed statistically invalid because the study was rather small, but I would still expect similar results if the study was scaled up. The parts that are self reported are the portions that are subjective, i.e. "What emotions did you feel during the game?" There is no way to conclude that they didn't feel what they say they felt, so this is the only portion that we have to take them for their word even though they could be lying. This subjective component has little consequence on the conclusions drawn.

Both of these would be examples of doing social science right. The real problems occur when there is some ulterior motive to either bias or intentionally skew the results, usually to push a social narrative or uphold an ideology. Take the whole of economics for example, we assume that people act rationally in their own best interest and have this idea that the best will rise to the top, when all the data says almost exactly the opposite.

What about all the studies that are slowly carving away at the concept of free will? There are so many studies that say that people are a product of their environment and their biology. If I remember correctly this is something we agree on. Despite this, our entire society is founded on that idea, its very important for politicians to keep face, so society mostly ignores this fact.

@demifeministgal You can read or download as a PDF here: [researchgate.net]

@Happy_Killbot IS researchgate typically an open-source site?

@demifeministgal I don't know because I don't use it that much, but typically if a study is more than a few years old, then you can typically find it published or copied somewhere else.

Good definition of empathy Nani. It's very bad out there. I keep hoping that we've hit bottom, but we don't seem to have

I fear this is one of the main reasons, but it’s something we are moving beyond I think/ hope. There’s certainly nothing like a shared enemy to bring people together. Perhaps the shared goal of keeping the climate stable enough to live in will help us?

@girlwithsmiles

At this current time, it seems as if this problem is still very rampant in our society. Examples of this are CNN VS FOX, Left vs Right, and the issues mentioned in the initial post.

There are people trying to have dialectics about these issues, so there is hope. However, they are often quitted via ad hominem attacks.

Another cause for hope is that social media is relatively new and perhaps some of its negative aspects are a result of growing pains, and we will get pass them

While I agree common enemies bring people together, I am not sure if climate change will be the unifying force because it has become a left vs right issue.

@Stoic247 oh, that’s a shame. I’m not sure if it’s so left versus right here. But the status quo has been fossil fuels for so long I think the right may be preserving business opportunities that many think outmoded now, and fracking is certainly a decisive issue too.
Yes I’ve heard some studies say that we’re coming out of our expected groups online, I learn a lot online.

Well his quote is a bit diminished for me since there is no contemporary evidence of a jesus and so he most likely never actually took flesh/was real. I do not think so. You can tell if someone is playing devil's advocate... these are usually people that have opposite beliefs than me and assume the only reason I think/believe as I do is because I must be part of the demographic I am defending... actually it is projection on their part.

@demifeministgal
You all are silly
Worked up about words on a platform that doesn’t exist
Why waste the adrenaline

@darthfaja Why bother to respond on that premise!

@darthfaja I am not wasting anything... in fact for me to process my feelings it helps to vent or rant or get it out in the open... research has shown bottling up or shoving down emotions is NOT healthy and can lead to a breakdown down the line. So you do you mr stoic man. XD

@demifeministgal
K

No my bubble is filled with the so-called "loving Christian" bigots.. but I expect that from religious nutters... but I am not used to experiencing this same mentality from agnostics or atheists... I expect BETTER of this community, not less. Perhaps I need to lower my expectations. :/

@demifeministgal "but I am not used to experiencing this same mentality from agnostics or atheists... I expect BETTER of this community"

Why?
Are we no less human and therefore subject to all those failings?

Because someone is a non believer does not make them a critical or deep thinker, does not make them skeptical on all topics, and even if we try to be, we will have blind spots, part and parcel of the human condition.

Hope for a better humanity, don't bank on it.
(Is it not interesting that the term "Bank on it" exists as an expression of trust, when Banks have been very untrustworty throughout history?)

@Davesnothere @Davesnothere Because the atheists/agnostics I encounter or have heard about are intelligent or academics and so I guess I extrapolated that to all atheists/agnostics.

@demifeministgal It would be nice for the world to be populated by critical thinkers, but a quick look at history does not reveal that.
Some of us are . . .

yes, venting works....

I will have to look up strain theory... what do you mean by moral entrepreneurialism?

@demifeministgal Moral entrepreneurialism is when a, usually middle class, group take it upon themselves to be the moral adjudicator for a social position such as fundamental Christian position on abortion or white supremicist stance on immigration.

It is a group attempting to force behaviour from their moral standpoint rather than legal.

ooh wow it's a sociological concept... how have I never heard of it?! Darn... thanks for the info

@demifeministgal Not a problem.!

While it's arguable they may do it better, this is a distinctly human problem.

The most consistently self-serving people I know are conservatives.

@GomezSpock everyone has blind spots. But the conservative position is distinctly lacking in empathy. Liberals are trying (however imperfectly) to make the world better for everyone. Conservatives are working to make the world better for themselves, and people like themselves, even if it’s at the expense of others.

You're really stupid.. She said she didn't distribute any nude pics of herself.

@indirect76 well I got the joke anyway

@Cutiebeauty You obviously have no understanding of sarcasm, nor irony. This is major problem with the "progressives." NO SENSE OF HUMOR.

So, thank you for the example.

@Jacar you obviously see examples of your crap everywhere...

well then according to your own logic I am blameless here since I have never taken a nude in my life.... try again?

@Jacar blah blah blah blah blah

WTF is with you and your constant circle back to "progressives"? Who denied you communion at the church?

When you offer something to the discussion, perhaps people will take you a tad more seriously.

So then the ones that cannot provide enthusiastic support of causes are not rational then? okay.