Areas where you'd respectfully disagree with Chuck

[Yukaphile]

Would you try to paint those 2006 American soldiers as victims? No. Very few people try to paint them as decent boys just gone awry from war trauma. I tend to agree with people I see who say rather they are decent-seeming, and the war just stripped away the illusion to reveal the ugliness underneath. And mob mentality is no excuse. Especially telling given they had messed up home lives prior to entering the service, so that really just proves my point.

I see war as the ultimate test of your and humanity's ideals. What you've been raised with. The beliefs you cherish. Will they hold? And it defines what kind of person you are. Because for some sick puppies out there, that kind of sadism is fun. This is all the more telling with lots of soldiers who saw what their comrades were doing, that was clearly wrong, past the pale, and shot them, or protected their victims. So social order and justice can exist even in a war zone. Remember that.

[clearspira]

Would you try to paint those 2006 American soldiers as victims? No. Very few people try to paint them as decent boys just gone awry from war trauma. I tend to agree with people I see who say rather they are decent-seeming, and the war just stripped away the illusion to reveal the ugliness underneath. And mob mentality is no excuse. Especially telling given they had messed up home lives prior to entering the service, so that really just proves my point.

I see war as the ultimate test of your and humanity's ideals. What you've been raised with. The beliefs you cherish. Will they hold? And it defines what kind of person you are. Because for some sick puppies out there, that kind of sadism is fun. This is all the more telling with lots of soldiers who saw what their comrades were doing, that was clearly wrong, past the pale, and shot them, or protected their victims. So social order and justice can exist even in a war zone. Remember that.

I assume you are referring to the torture photos? Yeah, this is a good example of bad people doing bad things and where the excuse does not work. But just because you have found an example does not automatically mean that good people being twisted in war is wrong as you seem to be implying.
And as for the idea of mob mentality not being an excuse, perhaps its not. But peer pressure is a real thing felt by everyone. Being ostracized by a group - particularly a group responsible for literally watching your back from bullets AND you already know is capable of doing reprehensible things to you if you piss them off is a terrifying idea.

All of what you wrote in that last paragraph sounds great and would make an awesome tagline for a movie poster, but these things do not work that way in real life. And can you link me to an example of a modern soldier shooting dead a comrade attacking the innocent as if he's on the set of a John Wayne film? Sounds like you made that up imo because that would have definitely made the news.

[Yukaphile]

I dunno, peer pressure was never a problem with me. But then, I'm highly individualistic.

That was something I read about for WWII admittedly, so not very recent.

Another area I disagree with Chuck is his extreme dislike for hippies. I've found many of them to be harmless, and just want a little love, and for us to get along. Maybe I'm in the minority on this?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Hippies as a spawning movement in the Woodstock era isn't really the issue. Laid back culture that undermines problems of other people or the overall world is. It's not about the message, it's about the viewpoint that any given people with an issue just need to relax and let their problems go.

[Karha of Honor]

I dunno, peer pressure was never a problem with me. But then, I'm highly individualistic.

That was something I read about for WWII admittedly, so not very recent.

Another area I disagree with Chuck is his extreme dislike for hippies. I've found many of them to be harmless, and just want a little love, and for us to get along. Maybe I'm in the minority on this?

They are a failed movement, last time i checked.

[Yukaphile]

Can't recall if I mentioned this, but I disagree with Chuck saying that the men leading the good guys and women leading the bad guys in "Redemption" is "an interesting approach to diversity." I know it's not intentional on the part of the TNG writers, but if you're going to go down that road, then it's insulting, not "interesting."

[AllanO]

Want a headache? Corporations arguably have moods (cautious, bold), absorb other corporations, reproduce with spin-offs... But they don't really reproduce in kind, so that might not apply. They have some legal personhood too, but I think that's just a legal convenience.

Legally to oversimplify a pretty clear argument for corporate rights goes from composition corporations are made up of people people have rights therefore corporations have those rights, similarly neurons (and other brain tissues) are solid and have shape, therefore a brain made out of them are solid and have shape. Not all things are composed like that, for example brains can control a body a single can not and so on.

It is a bit of a quandry though if you think the right compound of things (like a gaggle of neurons) engender a mind, could people be combined in such away that there collective actions give rise to a mind? I think first corporations are actually way simpler than a human or animal brain (billions of neurons each with several connections etc.). Second their are countervailing and interfering causes all the way through, if a corporation is issuing statements while in a way they may be from no person's actual perspective they may be written by a PR person trying to put themselves in the role of the corp or an accountant following a strict model etc. without really being the result of some complex interaction of the individuals precisely.

Still in some sense if you are a good materialist about mind or the like then the right sort of combination should produce minds and whose to say a combination of people might not manage it...

I was fond of Rin Tin Tin (K9 cop).

I thought he was a private and the army's pride and joy.

The canine adventurer I think of is the Littlest Hobo, Deforest Kelley was in an episode of his show.

Although in the context of this discussion I am thinking of the movie K-9000, where a human cop gets accidentally connected to an experimental cyborg dog whose intelligence has been greatly enhanced. The link allows the dog to communicate with the human cop only thus allowing the dynamics of the buddy cop & dog movie to more resemble a buddy cop movie (although the dog is the naive fish out of water character also having been newly cybernetically enhanced).

One could imagine a situation where such a cybernetically enhanced dog becomes a crew member of a starship. I am imagining some of the crew members being a little uncomfortable with this and others taking it in stride ("wow I had no idea you were so closed minded").

And can you link me to an example of a modern soldier shooting dead a comrade attacking the innocent as if he's on the set of a John Wayne film? Sounds like you made that up imo because that would have definitely made the news.

The closest incident I can think of like this is the end of the My Lai Massacre where reportedly a helicopter pilot, Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson, threatened to shoot US soldiers if they did not cease attacking villagers. He only threatened to shoot. ( https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam- ... massacre-1 )

From my sense of history and the personal stories of people at war, various excesses committed by combatants may well be crimes, but my own or anyone else's personal reassurances and conviction that we would have been different in the same circumstances is very limited reassure me that that is true.

[Karha of Honor]

Can't recall if I mentioned this, but I disagree with Chuck saying that the men leading the good guys and women leading the bad guys in "Redemption" is "an interesting approach to diversity." I know it's not intentional on the part of the TNG writers, but if you're going to go down that road, then it's insulting, not "interesting."

Why is it insulting exactly?

[Yukaphile]

Because if the leaders of the bad guys are all women and the leaders of the good guys are all men, it subscribes to that ancient and awful stereotype that women are conniving, scheming liars and manipulators out to undermine and destroy powerful men. That view Shakespeare had, which you know, needs to fucking DIE already.

[Karha of Honor]

Because if the leaders of the bad guys are all women and the leaders of the good guys are all men, it subscribes to that ancient and awful stereotype that women are conniving, scheming liars and manipulators out to undermine and destroy powerful men. That view Shakespeare had, which you know, needs to fucking DIE already.

Isn't this countering the the stereotype that women don't run inmportant shit?