The Gaming Den

Maj wrote:If my husband says to me that he's tired and just wants to sleep, putting my own personal needs ahead of his is utterly selfish and inconsiderate. It's a giant "I don't care what you want because what I want takes priority."

Great, once again. Do you think people who are open to having sex with strangers at conventions say "I'm done talking now, but hey, if anyone wants to have sex with me, I am open to offers."? Or do you think they perhaps use some kind of euphemism?

Maj wrote:If my husband says to me that he's tired and just wants to sleep, putting my own personal needs ahead of his is utterly selfish and inconsiderate.

That is not at all what is happening. If your husband says he is tired and you resolve to have sex with him regardless of how he feels about it, that is selfish and inconsiderate. Also, marital rape. If your husband says he is tired and you ask him if he would like to have sex, that is presenting an alternative that probably wasn't even on the table or considered a minute ago. Answers received might range from "no, I really am way too tired," to "I'd like to, but I have to be up early tomorrow," to "yes, I'd like that."

I'm pretty sure 90% of people who took up the field experiment of offering oral sex to their partner after they'd said they were going to bed would find not only that it caused zero offense, but that they'd spend a lot of time going down on their partner. Anyone who thinks asking people if they'd rather do ____ than sleep is inherently offensive is insane. But more importantly, wrong.

Maj wrote: If my husband says to me that he's tired and just wants to sleep, putting my own personal needs ahead of his is utterly selfish and inconsiderate. It's a giant "I don't care what you want because what I want takes priority."

This perception of disrespect is still insane. Aside from the fact that one is, pretty much by definition, giving their own wants and needs priority in any situation where they're making a request for someone else's time, effort, or resources; the notion that other people should view your stated goals and desires as sacrosanct without formal acknowledgement of their impertinence is both baffling and awe-inspiring.

FrankTrollman wrote:Does anyone actually think that saying "I'm going to bed" makes the reply "would you like to get some coffee?" an inadmissable reply? Anyone?

-Username17

Orion wrote:No one that I'm aware of.

And yet, on this very page Maj is claiming exactly that. Which is important, because the idea that offering someone coffee after they said that they were sleepy is disrespectful is an absolutely required premise for Rebecca Watson's argument. If you don't buy the idea that offering coffee to sleepy people is an act of sexualized aggression, you cannot get to Rebecca Watson's conclusion.

Which is why, of course, that with the exception of Maj, every single person defending Rebecca Watson on this thread has refrained from actually addressing the argument at hand and taken to defending mighty straw forts from an invasion of straw men instead. Dragon Child, The Jerk Store, ckafrica, Blade, Sabs, and yes, you, Orion, have all chosen to go off on some tangent ranging from "pretty offensive" to "amazingly offensive" rather than even try to defend the actual contested statement.

Dragon Child got himself all worked up about how apparently he thinks everyone who doesn't agree with Rebecca Watson blames victims of date rape. Because blatantly lying about everyone on the other side of the argument and calling everyone a rape apologist is way easier than rhetorically defending the idea that offering coffee to sleepy people is an inherently disrespectful and sexually aggressive act.

But anyway, you said you were going to defend some actual contested rhetorical territory.

Orion wrote:--Explain how I think disparities in elevator etiquette should be handled by international travelers
--Explain why Saudi Arabia is not very much like Wastonland
--Explain why gay panic is not very much like rebecca watson's video
--Explain what the actual rules are about who you get to sexually proposition
--Explain why the possibility of the man being a rapist is not a necessary premise of Watson's claim
--Explain why the possibility of the man being a rapist is in fact a relevant consideration

-Username17

Typical Franktrollism: reducing the argument into a rephrasing of part of the argument which makes your point of view the only sane one.
Repeat every time anyone attempts to restore part of all of the rest of the scope of the argument until nobody bothers to talk with you.

(If it takes too long, insulting them can help shorten the time).

Blade wrote:Typical Franktrollism: reducing the argument into a rephrasing of part of the argument which makes your point of view the only sane one.
Repeat every time anyone attempts to restore part of all of the rest of the scope of the argument until nobody bothers to talk with you.

Your reaction, when told to justify your point because it makes no sense, is to bitch and moan about how mean Frank is for telling you to justify your point because it makes no sense.

You are the cancer of the internet. Please stop.

Blade wrote:Typical Franktrollism: reducing the argument into a rephrasing of part of the argument which makes your point of view the only sane one.
Repeat every time anyone attempts to restore part of all of the rest of the scope of the argument until nobody bothers to talk with you.

(If it takes too long, insulting them can help shorten the time).

Hey asshole:

Remember how you said that the reason it was not OK for racists to ask black men to keep their eyes down was because it demeans them as people. But you held fast to your idea that it was OK to ask men to not initiate conversations with people they might find attractive on the grounds that those people might be made uncomfortable, apparently because that doesn't demean them? And remember how you still haven't explained why or how it is in any way unreasonable for homophobic people to ask gay men to not initiate conversations with anyone on exactly the same grounds?

Remember that? Pepperidge Farm remembers.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Josh: the "Making unwanted advances is creepy" crowd are flipping out...

And how is this a surprise to anyone here -- I mean, weren't the rest of you also nerds and game geeks in high school? Dude is downright lucky that all Watson is accusing him of is rudeness and general creepishness and not actual felonies.

Josh_Kablack wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:Josh: the "Making unwanted advances is creepy" crowd are flipping out...

And how is this a surprise to anyone here -- I mean, weren't the rest of you also nerds and game geeks in high school? Dude is downright lucky that all Watson is accusing him of is rudeness and general creepishness and not actual felonies.

Wait, what?

Frank wrote:that offering coffee to sleepy people is an inherently disrespectful and sexually aggressive act.

No. Rebecca Watson clearly laid out a circumstance in her video. It included being single, being alone, being in an enclosed space, having her words ignored, being at a specific time, being in a foreign country, being invited to an activity in the bedroom of a person who also happens to be a male stranger. She was very specific about the circumstance, and it included ALL of those.

It's not about the coffee. You just choose to focus on that right now because if you only consider that fact, it makes her looks stupid.

Maj wrote:

Frank wrote:that offering coffee to sleepy people is an inherently disrespectful and sexually aggressive act.

No. Rebecca Watson clearly laid out a circumstance in her video. It included being single, being alone, being in an enclosed space, having her words ignored, being at a specific time, being in a foreign country, being invited to an activity in the bedroom of a person who also happens to be a male stranger. She was very specific about the circumstance, and it included ALL of those.

It's not about the coffee. You just choose to focus on that right now because if you only consider that fact, it makes her looks stupid.

We're just focusing on the coffee because if the guy offered her a stimulant in exchange for conversation, then he obviously wasn't ignoring her fucking words if she said she was sleepy. The circumstance collapses if any part of the framing is retarded. As it happens, every part of the framing is retarded.

You're just using denial in depth strategies. We've been over the 4AM supposed issue, the elevator supposed issue, the hotel room in a fucking convention supposed issue, and the male stranger supposed issue. Every one of those supposed issues is complete bullshit when it comes to suggesting that the guy actually did anything wrong. And the "having her words ignored" supposed issue is also bullshit, because she obviously didn't have her words ignored. She didn't have her words ignored when she said she was sleepy, because the man offered her coffee. And she didn't have her words ignored when she declined, because the guy didn't make any additional offers and left her to her own devices.

It's not that we're selectively picking the parts of her argument that make her look bad. It's that literally every single part of her argument makes her look bad. Because for her argument to have any merit, the man in question would have actually had to wrong her in some way, which he did not do. He made an apparently good faith offer to do something that many people in the convention hall were doing at the time (meeting up in rooms and talking over coffee), and dropped the subject respectfully when his offer was declined.

She accused him of having sexually objectivized her, but there is no evidence at all that he actually did that. Literally her entire argument for that is that "coffee" means hot monkey sex. Like apparently all her coffee knowledge comes from Grand Theft Auto mods. And yes, when we look at that part of the argument, it makes her look stupid and crazy.

But when we look at the "confined space" issue it makes her look stupid and crazy too. There's no way to know just by looking at someone whether they are more claustrophobic or more agoraphobic unless they are currently tearing their own skin off at the time. The elevator is again and still objectively one of the most secure locations in the hotel (and thus, the world), and initiating a conversation in an elevator obviates any social anxiety caused by onlookers and takes advantage of the fact that the people have already been placed within physical social distance by factors beyond either person's control. It's a fucking stupid argument. All of the pieces of the argument are stupid. And we can and have raked every single fucking one of them over the coals, because it is easy to do.

If she is going to condemn someone's behavior and attempt to offer proscriptive behavioral rules, she needs to show some point in which the other person behaved badly. And she fucking hasn't.

-Username17

Frank, you missed Maj's point again. She doesn't think that any specific factor in any way is bad. Just that by adding zero enough times, you eventually end up with one.

Because if you take a whole bunch of factors no single one of which makes Watson being upset even slightly justified, and you add them all together, they magically become total justification.

Josh_Kablack wrote:And how is this a surprise to anyone here -- I mean, weren't the rest of you also nerds and game geeks in high school? Dude is downright lucky that all Watson is accusing him of is rudeness and general creepishness and not actual felonies.

.....what?

What you've just said is dumbfounding. Do you not know what words are?

Lemme spell it out for ya Dean:

1. The stereotype for the folks what play D&D is a stereotype that nobody wants advances from.

2. The people on this board are primarily here due to their shared interest in D&D and similar hobbies.

3. Therefore the people on this board should have a greater-than-average experience with people's reactions to unwanted advances.

4. In my own experience, the sorts of people who are come down on the "unwanted advances are creepy" side should be assumed to be on hair-triggers for " flipping out ".
4a. In my own experience such "flipping out" can include baseless allegations of much more serious misconduct.

Ok, understood. I thought you were implying that you believed a felony had taken place. Snark retracted!

Why are smart people drawn to atheism?

sigma999 wrote:Why are smart people drawn to atheism?

Is this a serious question?

Why would an intelligent person with access to effectively all of science, philosophy, and history (we're on the internet, I assume you have access to wikipedia and google) believe that some sheep herder 2000 years ago knows better than them?

Because religion is actually wrong. It's just some shit that some guys who took some drugs 2000 years ago wrote down. Mixed wine in the bible is a reference to Wine and MUSHROOMS. Like, magic mushrooms. The reason there is wine in all the stories is because the stories are actually about people tripping balls. That's the whole fucking book. The thing where they go on top of the mountain and burn incense? They sat around inhaling some pot vapors. Religion is literally written by drugged hippies. That's why you always see modern druggies getting so philosophical. Because that's what drugs do.

Personally, I know better than a drugged sheep herder 2000 years ago. Like, I am not claiming that the moral thing to do is for a girl that gets raped be forced to marry her rapist and have the rapist pay the father of the girl fifty bucks. Because I'm not retarded.

Edit: The OTHER part of why smart people tend to be atheist is that smart people sometimes bother to actually read the Holy Book at some point, while dumb people are content to have selections read to them by the shaman without actually reading it for themselves. If you read any of the holy books you quickly figure out that the whole thing is dated bullshit.

FrankTrollman wrote:The circumstance collapses if any part of the framing is retarded. As it happens, every part of the framing is retarded.

No, it doesn't collapse - that's the fallacy of composition. Just because each component of a situation is just fine alone, doesn't mean that the situation as a whole is just fine.

Maj wrote:No, it doesn't collapse - that's the fallacy of composition. Just because each component of a situation is just fine alone, doesn't mean that the situation as a whole is just fine.

1+1+1+1=4

But 0+0+0+0+0=0

If you want to claim that all the factors that make it appropriate to ask someone for sex can be combined in a way that makes it inappropriate to ask for sex you have to present some reason, really any reason at all, that you believe that.

Once again, you keep describing the ideal situation to ask someone for sex and saying that it is completely inappropriate to ask for sex. The best argument you have is your absurd claim that he was ignoring what she said, and that one is obviously false.

ubernoob wrote:

sigma999 wrote:Why are smart people drawn to atheism?

Is this a serious question?

Yes. I agree with everything you stated though. I used to be religious as a teenager but then again I was also fearful of divine judgement, being watched by invisible forces, demons, and where one goes after death.
Typical Catholic things. Just like my mother's Irish side of the family.
Full of shit. No proof.

It think the tendency correlates to proving logical fallacies wrong.
Religion's only attempt at defending itself comes in the form of Pascal's Wager, which is feeble, and "faith", which is intangible.
The only debate from an Evangelical comes from quoting their book and their priest (who quotes the book), and becoming angry when those quotes don't hold up under scrutiny.

With internally solidifying my outlook on the world as "atheist" I feel confidently free of judgement from sources other than fellow humanity, which I have more respect for rather than a black and white division between believer and nonbeliever.

I even view zealots such as my mother with pity. I think there's a genetic component to it much like schizophrenia.

It probably would have been better if she pressed charges. I would be hard-pressed to believe a court would side with anyone but the guy.

Maj wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:The circumstance collapses if any part of the framing is retarded. As it happens, every part of the framing is retarded.

No, it doesn't collapse - that's the fallacy of composition. Just because each component of a situation is just fine alone, doesn't mean that the situation as a whole is just fine.

I have never seen anyone try to argue that claiming their argument is stupid and wrong because its premises are stupid and wrong is the fallacy of composition.

Believe it or not, if you do in fact believe all of those things are individually not issues (you don't, because you defended at length Rebecca Watson's ridiculous claim that "would you like some coffee?" was a disrespectful reply to "I'm going to bed") but voltron together to form an issue, you are under some obligation to describe how or why.

DSMatticus wrote:Believe it or not, if you do in fact believe all of those things are individually not issues (you don't, because you defended at length Rebecca Watson's ridiculous claim that "would you like some coffee?" was a disrespectful reply to "I'm going to bed") but voltron together to form an issue, you are under some obligation to describe how or why.

Technically, it was a question about coffee to the statement "I'm tired" not "I'm going to bed" which matters very little since they are so similar. But to the extent it matters, it is even more appropriate then.

Maj wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:The circumstance collapses if any part of the framing is retarded. As it happens, every part of the framing is retarded.

No, it doesn't collapse - that's the fallacy of composition. Just because each component of a situation is just fine alone, doesn't mean that the situation as a whole is just fine.

You're trying to make a "weight of evidence" argument, but that's not actually how those things work. This isn't one of those things where you have ten different things that each make the guy 10% likely to be the killer and all together that makes him 65% likely to be the killer. If all of the things you are doing are fine, then the things you are doing are, collectively, fine.

When you make an argument, and people can disprove any of your premises, your argument is wrong. A weight of evidence argument works because none of the premises are disproven at any point - merely adding statistical weight to your conclusion. An example might be that the killer had red hair, and the suspect had red hair. But worldwide, there are a hundred million gingers, so while that evidence makes it more likely that the suspect is the killer you need more evidence to reach that conclusion. Now Maj, your problem here is that none of the pieces of evidence in any way add weight to the argument that anything bad actually happened or that the man did anything wrong. So you can't make a weight of evidence argument. The weight of the evidence is still zero.

-Username17