There's Something Absolutely Wrong with what we do to Boys...

[Guynemer]

I want data, NYE. Hard data. That is the world I live in.

And the data that we have tell me that things are getting better, not worse.

[Hauldren Collider]

Kid, if anything you have said in this thread turns out to be true, it's only a coincidence.

[Guynemer]

Guynemer has never been particularly open minded on poly that I have seen. When presented with a viewpoint that is not his own, his standard response is "not sure if serious" or some sort of futurama gif.

Demonstrably false. Sometimes it is Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law.

[Hauldren Collider]

Demonstrably false. Sometimes it is Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law.

BTW I want you to know that despite your frequently assailing me with sarcastic gifs of awesome tv shows, I still think you're a rad dude

[Guynemer]

You said



It is so uncommon that the NY Times didn't see fit to publish an article about it, oh wait...

I'm supposed to be impressed that the NY Times published a lifestyle piece?

Look. I'm not saying we don't have problems. What I'm saying is that the way boys are raised to regard manhood, or however you want to phrase it? Not particularly one of them.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Btw, anyone else read the thread title and wonder if Kid became a Catholic?

[Guynemer]

BTW I want you to know that despite your frequently assailing me with sarcastic gifs of awesome tv shows, I still think you're a rad dude

The feeling is mutual, mon ami.

[ZEE]

I want to see a Vocaroo Poast in this thrade and I want to see one soon

[Guynemer]

Btw, anyone else read the thread title and wonder if Kid became a Catholic?

ermmm... didn't Albie start this thread?

[C0ckney]

Re: casualties: a quick search says less than a million died in Vietnam, over twenty years. WWI killed 37 mil over the course of about four. Total war between industrialized nations is far, far bloodier than the extended proxy-war dick-waggling which replaced it. I know proxy wars are old news--the American Revolution was one--but I doubt all those Vietnamese would have died if we'd still been having straight-out slugfests with our enemies. I have a hard time saying, "it's a good thing that all those peasants got firebombed, instead of a far larger number of people whose countries were actually hostile to one another." That's a cynical kind of math.

i don't think it's cynical to say that it's a good thing that fewer people are dying because the great powers don't go to war any more. it's always possible to point to a particular example and say that it could have been different if x, y and z, but we're talking in general terms here. my point is that wars like vietnam, a more powerful state fighting in a less powerful one, have always happened (lest we forget, vietnam started out as a colonial war against the french). it's not as if we've swapped one kind of war for another.

I guess what I'm getting at is that most of the reduction in violent deaths is a quirk of historical forces, far more than it is a deliberate result of better policy or what-have-you. And looking at it as anything other than a fortunate fluke requires a certain amount of naivete IMO. Nukes, horrible as they are, have likely saved more lives than penicillin. And we don't use them not out of any humane impulse, but because the retaliation would likely incur too heavy a penalty.

it really depends on how you look at it i suppose. nukes have certainly stopped wars between the great powers, but if we look beyond that, we can other declines in violence, with different explanations. we've become more empathetic, probably as a result of becoming more educated. just over a century ago, it was a mainstream idea that men could treat other men as property and hold them and their children in perpetual bondage. even more recently, a man couldn't rape his wife, he was merely exercising his conjugal rights. as we've become more empathetic and less bound up by tradition and dogma, it's become impossible to defend things like slavery.

Re: crime, the Economist had an article on that recently. They noted that, in America at least, it might have to do with our policy of locking up anyone who does anything for any reason. Also, on their WWI-centennial coverage, they noted that we were saying much the same rosy stuff as Pinker says now, back in 1913...

crime has declined across the western world, and as there are many and varied policies on criminal justice in those countries, that explanation doesn't sound very convincing. there must be something else going on.

[kentonio]

Forms of communication have become much faster and there's far more surveillance of the public than there ever was in the past. Combine that with huge advancements in criminal evidence techniques and it's hardly surprising that crime, particularly violent crime has declined to about its lowest levels ever.

If income equality is allowed to continue growing however and the safety nets weakened more, you can expect those figures to rise again. People might not commit crimes of greed as much when they are more likely to be caught, but they'll still commit crimes of need.

[Guynemer]

If income equality is allowed to continue growing

Speaking of actual factual problems that are getting worse and we need to solve...

[Hauldren Collider]

Can you give a reason for income inequality being bad other than some vagaries like "I think the iphone-owning, prius driving peasants will revolt"?

[Imran Siddiqui]

ermmm... didn't Albie start this thread?

****ing A... ok, make that Albie.

[Guynemer]

Income inequality is not, in and of itself, bad; it is actually good. But the acceleration of the gap between the haves and have-nots does not appear sustainable.