Simon Paynton

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

She was living in a “safe” country when I knew her.

That’s good to know.  She was courageous.  I was afraid of what might happen to her.

jakelafort wrote:

It is awesome you are not an ideologue.

Ideology is antithetical to free thinking.

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Many Muslim women still need permission from male relatives for the little things……. like marriage, travel (in some cases), choosing what to wear, gaining an education, speaking, singing, reading and even getting certain medical procedures done. But apart from that……

This paper, from the (weirdly virus-r…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Remember Nessrriinn from the old TA site?

Was she the lady from Saudi Arabia?  What happened to her?  Is she in prison, for being normal?

jakelafort wrote:

So the daughter pipes in that she was amazed at university that the first thing she was taught was that we should not judge Islam for these practices. The daughter goes on to describe it as a betrayal of human rights.

Do you have this video?  Of course, I deplore making excuses for the medieval abuse of women.  I would be i…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:

Tell me Simon if you are okay with the cultural relativism that protects abusers and punishes the abused.

No, I’m not OK with beating women, or for making excuses for it.  Do people really do that?  Can you find evidence of a “lefty” defending abuse of women by Islam?  I’m not denying it happens, but I’ve never seen it in the fl…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:

But one thing i will touch on is how wrongheaded it is to decide that morality is always relative and that we should not judge others who make us retch and puke purple and green chunks because of their vile norms.

Put it this way, different people value different norms and goods, and some of those norms/goods are incompatible…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Women’s bodies are moralized more than men’s, study finds.

Thank you for posting this.  I haven’t seen it anywhere else, and it’s enabled me to answer a number of long-standing questions in research on morality.  Namely, about moral purity, “harmless harms”, and “moral dumbfounding”.

Moral purity means obser…[Read more]

_Robert_ wrote:

I’ll say one thing, if Trump’s ultimate goal was to get Western Europe to begin handling more of their own military defense and “ante up” on spending, it is working. This idea that he may be just faking his love affair with Putin to achieve this goal would indicate that he is a very clever man, indeed. LOL !

I agree he is right t…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:

Her pretty face kept her in the news cycle.

It was the sensationalism of the case that kept it in the news cycle, together with her being British, one of our own.  Murder, sex, drugs, pretty girls, Africans, Italians – it had it all.

Unseen wrote:

Had she been a black girl or a homely white girl, she’d have been toast.

If she had been Black, she would have been treated worse by the police and the press.  Beyond that, that’s a pretty misogynistic assessment.  What do the Brits think?  We’ve pretty much forgotten about it.  I think it unfolded in a complex way and we follo…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:

the rules of the “patriarchy” don’t redound to the benefit of most men. … Lots of reverse serendipity to go around on this flying mudball in space.

You’re right, those things are true.  There’s a sore deal for men there.  However, they’re there for reasons of practical necessity – someone’s got to do those jobs, and wom…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Women’s bodies are moralized more than men’s, study finds.

This finding is exactly consistent with patriarchy behaving as a moral domain whose overarching method is to dominate and control women and their sexuality.  Women are subject to all kinds of rules that men are not.  The more they try to assert self-…[Read more]

Reg the Fronkey Farmer wrote:

Your initial belief (before evidence) + new evidence = updated belief.

That sounds very reasonable.

Unseen wrote:

It is not single axioms that strike me as obvious, it is a system in which consequences and premises give one another mutual support.” — Wittgenstein, On Certainty, sec. 141-42

That’s good too.  If ther…[Read more]

I thought that Bayesian reasoning was about extrapolating “what is” to “what might be”, thereby limiting new ideas.