I get what you’re saying, but I’m not sure I’d characterize what happened as “debating”. Someone posted some wildly inappropriate stuff. He was called out for it. When he doubled down, his account was closed. Along the way, some people dispassionately explained why it was unacceptable. There was no back-and-forth about the merits of racist ideology. There was instead only a unanimous condemnation of what he wrote. That, to my mind, in no way lends it credibility.
These ideas exist. They will be presented. They will come up when you’re talking to people, and sometimes people you thought you knew. When that happens, there’s value in seeing how they’re refuted. That doesn’t mean they’re condoned, welcomed, or even tolerated.
Yeah and it will keep happening because they have a platform, a way to get people to listen. It’s not about discussion or debate, it’s a chance to share what is cut quick elsewhere but lingers here. It’s why we keep seeing stuff like this.
One thing that is, i don’t know if interesting is the right word, but it’s something… Is that i seem to recall George presenting non insane, non extremist views. I may be mistaken.
But clearly, at some point, he started absorbing this kind of poorly disguised racism. This is perhaps an illustration of the rest with which such things can fester, given a chance.
The bad thing about banning him from here, is that it will be doing push him further into the kinds of places that foster ideas like “race realism”.
How many times have we seen this? Is this a common thing in these forums and I’m somehow just unaware of those threads?
A list of the usernames of people who come here, post shit like this, and get banned but only after days of engagement, with people clicking through their resources and clearly reading their propaganda so they can reply? It’s a dream to get that kind of attention from a generic site not catering to them.
It’s been more than two, although I don’t know how many gman repeats there were or roommates.
This stuff wouldn’t last more than a few minutes on more diverse sites. It wouldn’t even be worth their time to try.
Yeah, that’s how I felt about gman. I felt like that kid could have been won over. But I’ve come to the conclusion that’s the sort of thing that probably needs to be done one-on-one. Once it’s out in public and there are multiple voices refuting it with a variety of approaches, some angry, some patient, some ridiculing, it turns into a siege mentality. The person will most likely just dig in and it’s just a matter of time before he breaks or is run off.
The real hope for someone like gurugeorge was that he’d hung around and discovered on his own, in various discussions – like this one, for instance – that those ideas are unacceptable. Which is why I think this thread is valuable. Are there other posters here who might harbor some of those same ideas? And how did they feel reading this thread and the reactions to it? Did it make a difference? I hope so.
Gman’s friend, or “friend”, didn’t post racist stuff. He posted Islamaphobic stuff. Which, okay, is tantamount to racism. But if there were others, I missed them. Since you claim it keeps happening, can you show me the other times we’ve had openly racist posts?
So when someone says gman and his clones, clones as in plural, we do know he or someone like him came back more than once right, in addition to his roommate, in addition to this…
Why would I report anything like this? Couldn’t even get the the title of this topic changed, wasn’t even a consideration until a few more people said the same thing and even then… still left it.
I’m surprised as my memory tells me that gurugeorge has posted on this forum alot and for a long time. It’s sad to see someone that has fallen prey to hard-right propaganda, either recently or for a long time (it’s hard to tell when the only subject usually discussed is videogames). I hope that he finds a more accepting and loving worldview some day, for his own mental health as well as the health of society.
I’m sorry @Nesrie you had to see this. I have no personal experience, but I have seen first hand from friends that any exposure to racism is damaging (even if other people in the group proceed to roundly condemn it, all it takes is exposure). So I can certainly understand why you would prefer that these posts were deleted rather than ridiculed/rebuked.
I’m pretty sure when he used to post much more often in the P&R forum he used “regressive Left” frequently and more than likely always held his racists views. One product of this shitty timeline is the notion that racists can now be open about it especially when cloaked in the pseudo-science bullshit proliferating on YouTube and the like.
Wow this thread is interestingly weird, and I’m a bit reluctant to put my two cents in as an actual professional geneticist with about 20 years in the field and a ton of publications - this feels like a landmine waiting to be stepped on for someone in the field, given the incredibly shitty starting point of this conversation.
Maybe it’s just worth people checking out this NYT article written by someone I occasionally lab space with, who’s a million times more eloquent than myself…
The orthodoxy goes further, holding that we should be anxious about any research into genetic differences among populations. The concern is that such research, no matter how well-intentioned, is located on a slippery slope that leads to the kinds of pseudoscientific arguments about biological difference that were used in the past to try to justify the slave trade, the eugenics movement and the Nazis’ murder of six million Jews.
I have deep sympathy for the concern that genetic discoveries could be misused to justify racism. But as a geneticist I also know that it is simply no longer possible to ignore average genetic differences among “races.”
Groundbreaking advances in DNA sequencing technology have been made over the last two decades. These advances enable us to measure with exquisite accuracy what fraction of an individual’s genetic ancestry traces back to, say, West Africa 500 years ago — before the mixing in the Americas of the West African and European gene pools that were almost completely isolated for the last 70,000 years. With the help of these tools, we are learning that while race may be a social construct, differences in genetic ancestry that happen to correlate to many of today’s racial constructs are real.
Recent genetic studies have demonstrated differences across populations not just in the genetic determinants of simple traits such as skin color, but also in more complex traits like bodily dimensions and susceptibility to diseases. For example, we now know that genetic factors help explain why northern Europeans are taller on average than southern Europeans, why multiple sclerosis is more common in European-Americans than in African-Americans, and why the reverse is true for end-stage kidney disease.
Because it’s not tolerated on the forum. If you don’t report it, we might not know it’s there. Fortunately, other folks are willing to tag inappropriate comments. In the future, if someone’s comments bother you, I hope you’ll consider helping us by using the moderation tools we provide.
Am I really? I’ve seen more tolerance of racism than I’ve seen tolerance of the absolute rejection of and reaction to that racism.
I am quite aware of the differing opinions.
If this was actually true, we wouldn’t have had that conversation go on for almost two days so a few could discuss the abhorrent. Of course the fact that he got banned and will likely target someone over that, see video above for explanation. There are consequences to this stuff but the people that face those consequences, voices barely heard if at all here.
And how did this start again, someone clearly, without a doubt, tried to claim that minorities and women are somehow genetically not worthy of doing reviews.
What would it have cost anyone to remove the fake make other people comfortable with racism label of race realism and just replaced it with something that isn’t a white supremacy talking point like… oh I don’t know, racism.
It seems pretty clear to me that Tom and Telefrog have learned from the gman experience and are continuing to learn. Two posters in the history of the forum isn’t exactly a growing infestation, and characterising multiple posters explaining in depth why what gurugeorge posted was nonsensical racism draped in a facade of pseudoscience as somehow being ‘tolerating racism’ doesn’t seem fair or accurate.
Given that the vast majority of posters hadn’t heard of race realism (myself included), this topic has served a positive purpose and will continue to do so for anyone ignorant of what seems to be the latest racism that’s de rigueur with racists who like to consider themselves intellectuals.
