Are debates in these places making us all bullies?

[Greatest I am]

Are debates in these places making us all bullies?

I plead guilty. I have discarded political correctness.

Oh, I try to mask it but I have become entrenched in my paradigm just as badly as most here.

I just recently, while nicking, answered a question. The answer I gave was on the rude side. A cheap mental shot you might say, instead of on the teaching side.

I was quick to apologise, but this aside, I began to think of bullying as an issue. Even my own! Even when I bother trying to be politically correct.

I see an upswing in the overall bullying in both myself and others. Not necessarily instance in many instances, no argument. But an increase nevertheless.

Teaching our children to communicate well. We are not.

Has that been what you are seeing?

If so, do you have a remedy with minimal censorship?

I happen to like sites that scribble out words and leave other things about the same other than straight personal attacks.

Is that just me or is it because, over time, we tend to not suffer those we consider to be fools too well?

Are debates in these places making us all bullies?

Regards
DL

[brimstoneSalad]

There's another thread where I conveyed that I don't think it's possible to really stop bullying without imposing on freedom of speech.
EquALLity may be able to remember which one.

I worry more about being effective than being nice or polite or PC. Although being nice often helps one BE effective, I also think there's a sweet spot. If you're too polite, you're less interesting and won't stir up any passion, but if you're too mean that hurts your endeavor as well.

Think of the most popular personalities; most of them are snarky.
There's a place for assholes, or being a bit harsh, but it can't be overdone to the point of being mean and kicking people when they're down, Think carrot and stick. When people move in the right direction or start cooperating with discussion, you have to give credit where do, and not be mean for no reason. We have to be encouraging.

[EquALLity]

^Yeah... You have some interesting ideas about freedom of speech. ;D
But you can't say you support freedom of speech if, like you said, you think Donald Trump should be in jail for lying and politicians shouldn't be able to disagree with climate change, and religious people shouldn't be able to spread their beliefs etc..

By any reasonable metric, if that's what you believe, you don't support freedom of speech. So you can't really use that argument.

Bullying is not the free exchange of ideas, and I don't think students should be allowed to bully each other. There's expressing ideas, and then there's being an asshole. I don't think it's very ambiguous.
Kids and teenagers killing themselves over bullying is PREVENTABLE. There's no legitimate reason to allow to be such a problem, IMO.

[brimstoneSalad]

By any reasonable metric, if that's what you believe, you don't support freedom of speech. So you can't really use that argument.

You misunderstand. Freedom of speech is an instrumental good; a necessity for practical purposes, not intrinsically good.
When we impose limits on Freedom of speech, we have to make sure those lines are clear, objective, and unambiguous. Somebody feeling insulted or offended is not that.

We discussed in the other thread how subjective bullying is.
I think this is where the conversation picked up again (thanks Google): http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1446&start=70#p17810

Science is not subjective; public speech that overtly undermines consensus to the detriment of society is a serious problem, whether denying global warming or the efficacy of vaccines.
A politician overtly lying about what he or she said on camera a day earlier is not subjective (I wouldn't recommend banning lying for most people, if only because the courts would be impossibly overburdened).

Bullying is not the free exchange of ideas,

It can be exchanging criticism, or ideas the other person finds offensive. We discussed this in the other thread. Maybe we should pick it up there?

There's expressing ideas, and then there's being an asshole. I don't think it's very ambiguous.

I know you don't think so, but there's no objective metric to distinguish them (as there is in the case of scientific fact, or demonstrable lies of politicians). In practice, defining and identifying "bullying" is too large of an obstacle.

Kids and teenagers killing themselves over bullying is PREVENTABLE. There's no legitimate reason to allow to be such a problem, IMO.

I agree it's preventable, just not by PC police. It's preventable by therapy for the victims, and teaching them to stand up for themselves. It's also preventable by focusing on child abuse at home, and removing children from abusive homes. It's also preventable by making schoolwork more engaging and avoiding boredom (which is a large motivator for bullying).

There's no reason to institute PC police and erode freedom of speech to do this, when those methods are better and do more overall good with less overall social harm.

[EquALLity]

You misunderstand. Freedom of speech is an instrumental good; a necessity for practical purposes, not intrinsically good.
When we impose limits on Freedom of speech, we have to make sure those lines are clear, objective, and unambiguous. Somebody feeling insulted or offended is not that.

Nothing is intrinsically good, so that's a meaningless point.

I agree with what you're saying in the context of political speech etc.. School bullying is completely different from that, bullying isn't someone expressing an honest opinion about a world issue and it only being problematic because it was offensive. It's targeting students and treating them cruelly just for fun, which is extremely fucked up, and I don't think there should be any tolerance for it.
Can I just reiterate that kids are killing themselves because of this? I think that takes relevance over some assholes not being able to be assholes.

We discussed in the other thread how subjective bullying is.
I think this is where the conversation picked up again (thanks Google): viewtopic.php?f=17&t=1446&start=70#p17810

That's your opinion. I don't think it's subjective.

Science is not subjective; public speech that overtly undermines consensus to the detriment of society is a serious problem, whether denying global warming or the efficacy of vaccines.
A politician overtly lying about what he or she said on camera a day earlier is not subjective (I wouldn't recommend banning lying for most people, if only because the courts would be impossibly overburdened).

But conservatives would say that climate change existing is subjective. It's your opinion that it isn't, and obviously you're correct, but the type of precedent you'd set by banning politicians lying is EXTREMELY EXTREMELY dangerous. That could easily be used by republicans for censorship, and if Trump in particular had the power to censor like that, he almost certainly would exploit it.

It can be exchanging criticism, or ideas the other person finds offensive. We discussed this in the other thread. Maybe we should pick it up there?

No offense, but I have no desire to go back to that topic.

It's not "ideas the other person finds offensive". It's bullying.
It's not "this is my idea politically" and that idea may be controversial; it's things like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0yr5nL7LNM
Please don't tell me that you don't think this should have been stopped by the school.

I know you don't think so, but there's no objective metric to distinguish them (as there is in the case of scientific fact, or demonstrable lies of politicians). In practice, defining and identifying "bullying" is too large of an obstacle.

Ummm, what? Did you just put bullying in quotes?
Apparently bullying isn't a thing now?

Not everything can be justified as freedom of speech. Just like you can't use it to justify bribing politicians, you can't use it to justify bullying.

I agree it's preventable, just not by PC police. It's preventable by therapy for the victims, and teaching them to stand up for themselves. It's also preventable by focusing on child abuse at home, and removing children from abusive homes. It's also preventable by making schoolwork more engaging and avoiding boredom (which is a large motivator for bullying).

There's no reason to institute PC police and erode freedom of speech to do this, when those methods are better and do more overall good with less overall social harm.

Yeah, that's a great way to combat bullying. But clearly it's not really happening.
The school should do both. Make sure the people who are bullied are helped directly, but also target the root of the problem - the bully.

[brimstoneSalad]

School bullying is completely different from that, bullying isn't someone expressing an honest opinion about a world issue and it only being problematic because it was offensive. It's targeting students and treating them cruelly just for fun, which is extremely fucked up, and I don't think there should be any tolerance for it.

You've identified a thought crime; it's wrong because of their motivations for doing it.
Until you have a mind reading device, however, you can not determine this with any reasonable level of certainty, or without bias. Punishing children unjustly just makes things worse, and helps teach children who are unfairly punished that there is no justice in the world and that they will be arbitrarily punished no matter what they do; it decouples cause and effect, crime and punishment, and makes them not respect authority or law. If you want to manufacture criminals, that's how you do it.

Can I just reiterate that kids are killing themselves because of this? I think that takes relevance over some assholes not being able to be assholes.

The reason kids are killing themselves is a perfect storm of a number of factors. Bullying is only one of them.
These children lack an innate sense of self worth, usually have troubled home lives or lack of positive parental attention, not enough friends to help bolster their senses of self esteem, inability to confront the bullies and return fire, and usually other problems that affect self esteem like speech problems, severe acne, depression, social anxiety (these things need to be addressed medically).

You can't pick out one factor and blame that for the death when there are so many that work together. Take any of them away, and the problem is reduced substantially. Even removing bullying (which is not possible) will not end the problem, there's still social isolation/shunning and ostracization without the mean words. In conservative societies people can easily be shunned into suicide without a single aspersion cast.

That's your opinion. I don't think it's subjective.

If you define bullying clearly as only acting upon a desire to hurt another person just for fun and amusement, that could be an objective definition which you could in theory measure with some kind of FMRI. However, in practice there's no means of measuring it; we don't have the technology to put wearable brain scanners on everybody, so you're just guessing about what conflicts are bullying and which are disagreements or attempts at valid criticism, and that is going to be subject to personal bias. You will inevitably punish people for bullying who were not doing what you described, and you'll let legitimate cases of bullying slip under the radar because they weren't obvious enough. That creates resentment, and teaches kids not to respect law or authority, as I said before. There are consequences to rules like that. You can't assume a person's intentions like that, you'll frequently be wrong.

But conservatives would say that climate change existing is subjective.

Science isn't subjective. It's based explicitly on methodology to eliminate human bias.

It's your opinion that it isn't,

No it isn't, it's a fact.

but the type of precedent you'd set by banning politicians lying is EXTREMELY EXTREMELY dangerous.

Which is why it wouldn't necessarily work in practice, if somebody hijacked the scientific institution.
We'd have to trust the courts. Historically, the courts have been pretty good at siding with science even when it was unpopular. Look into The Scopes Trial.

That could easily be used by republicans for censorship,

Possible, maybe. Easy, no.
That's why ability to limit freedom of speech has to be very conservative; only things that extremely objective, like the hard sciences, or overt lies.

and if Trump in particular had the power to censor like that, he almost certainly would exploit it.

Which is why limits should never be placed on subjective or difficult to substantiate issues like "bullying".

No offense, but I have no desire to go back to that topic.

Let's not repeat it here though, OK? We don't want to hijack this thread.

Please don't tell me that you don't think this should have been stopped by the school.

Sharks and lightning. Should we ban sharks from the ocean and mandate the installation of lightning rods every ten feet across the continent?
Media bias of picking up these cases as the cause du jour makes this look like a bigger issue than it is.

It's very likely that totally banning anything that looks like that will cause more harm than good.
Any policy change needs to pass the standards of safety (not causing other harmful consequences) and efficacy.

Ummm, what? Did you just put bullying in quotes?
Apparently bullying isn't a thing now?

I don't think it's clearly enough defined to make it a thing.
The way you defined it, by intention rather than symptomatically (as wanting to cause harm just for fun), is fine, but it's also impractical and borderline impossible (with current technology) to detect.

Yeah, that's a great way to combat bullying. But clearly it's not really happening.

It needs to happen.

The school should do both. Make sure the people who are bullied are helped directly, but also target the root of the problem - the bully.

The "bully" -- the human being who is engaging in "bullying" -- is not the root of the problem. The root of the problem is what is causing that person to act that way. And I addressed those too.

Labeling people as "bullies" and saying it's the people who are the problem is not helpful. They don't see themselves that way, and if they do then they're probably psychopaths (in terms of low IQ psychopaths, there's not much you can do about that right now aside from lock them up and throw away the key).
We need to look at the environment that produces these behaviors. If kids are doing it "for fun" it's usually (unless they're psychopathic sadists, which is VERY rare) because they're bored. School activity needs to be more engaging, which will help with learning too. Win-Win.

Many anti-bullying programs treat the issue more as a zero-sum-game and identify bullies as enemies. They're normal kids, for the most part. We need to treat them like it and understand the real causes behind the behavior.

[EquALLity]

You've identified a thought crime; it's wrong because of their motivations for doing it.
Until you have a mind reading device, however, you can not determine this with any reasonable level of certainty, or without bias. Punishing children unjustly just makes things worse, and helps teach children who are unfairly punished that there is no justice in the world that that they will be arbitrarily punished no matter what they do; it decouples cause and effect, crime and punishment, and makes them not respect authority or law. If you want to manufacture criminals, that's how you do it.

It's not a "thought crime", it's how the law works. Crimes ARE based on motivation, and they should be; it has nothing to do with Big Brother.

If your actions lead to the death of a person, that is of a certain level of criminality based on intent.
If it's an accident, then that's manslaughter. If it's intentional but not planned, it's second degree murder. If it's planned, then it's first degree murder. The crime is worse depending on MOTIVATION, because motivation MATTERS.

I'm not sure if you were necessarily disagreeing with that, but the fact that you used the term thought crime to describe it, which originates (or was popularized) from 1984, makes it sound like you were saying that it's a restriction on important freedoms.

Anyway, bullying always has malintent based on the way that I'm defining it.
Whether or not the girls who harassed Rebecca Sedwick had malintent is NOT ambiguous. At all.

[The reason kids are killing themselves is a perfect storm of a number of factors. Bullying is only one of them.
These children lack an innate sense of self worth, usually have troubled home lives or lack of positive parental attention, not enough friends to help bolster their senses of self esteem, inability to confront the bullies and return fire, and usually other problems that affect self esteem like speech problems, severe acne, depression, social anxiety (these things need to be addressed medically).

You can't pick out one factor and blame that for the death when there are so many that work together. Take any of them away, and the problem is reduced substantially. Even removing bullying (which is not possible) will not end the problem, there's still social isolation/shunning and ostracization without the mean words. In conservative societies people can easily be shunned into suicide without a single aspersion cast.

First of all, no. It could be almost completely or completely because of the bullying.

But yeah, it's probably a combination in certain cases as well. Like you said, if you take one of those away, the problem will be reduced substantially. There's no longer a perfect storm, and the conditions no longer form the perfect storm that causes suicide (in some cases, like I said, it can be completely/almost completely because of bullying).

Just like, if you make cupcakes, there are a lot of ingredients necessary to make them good. If you leave out a sweetener, they're not going to be good.

If you define bullying clearly as only a desire to hurt another person just for fun and amusement, that could be an objective definition which you could in theory measure with some kind of FMRI. However, in practice there's no means of measuring it; we don't have the technology to put wearable brain scanners on everybody, so you're just guessing about what conflicts are bullying and which are disagreements or attempts at valid criticism, and that is going to be subject to personal bias. You will inevitably punish people for bullying who were not doing what you described, and you'll let legitimate cases of bullying slip under the radar because they weren't obvious enough. That creates resentment, and teaches kids not to respect law or authority, as I said before. There are consequences to rules like that. You can't assume a person's intentions like that, you'll frequently be wrong.

We don't need to use technology, there's no need.

First of all, with this idea of making a mistakes - if there's cyberbullying, there's evidence, and we know it's not a mistake or someone lying. Do you think we should do something about cyberbullying to stop it?
If not, then obviously this isn't just about a lack of evidence.

In cases in which it's not cyberbullying, people still often record bullying incidents, and there's evidence there too. Do you think we should do something about that?

In a case in which we only have witnesses, those witnesses are valuable. If there are a lot of witnesses, it probably happened.
If it's just the accuser, then the school should keep an eye out to see if they catch anything else, and bring the accused in for a discussion about it. They shouldn't punish the accused student at first, they should just warn and explain why their alleged behavior is wrong. If they then catch anything while keeping an eye out, then that student should be punished.

Science isn't subjective. It's based explicitly on methodology to eliminate human bias.

And republicans would disagree.

No it isn't, it's a fact.

Republicans disagree with a lot of facts.

Which is why it wouldn't necessarily work in practice, if somebody hijacked the scientific institution.
We'd have to trust the courts. Historically, the courts have been pretty good at siding with science even when it was unpopular. Look into The Scopes Trial.

If somebody hijacked the scientific institution? What?

Politicians have the power to make laws that censor certain ideas if you set the precedent that you would with this policy. It's not just about science.

Possible, maybe. Easy, no.
That's why ability to limit freedom of speech has to be very conservative; only things that extremely objective, like the hard sciences, or overt lies.

No, easily. If they basically control the entire government, as they will in a month, then they have the power to do whatever the hell they want.

Which is why limits should never be placed on subjective or difficult to substantiate issues like "bullying".

I "disagree" with "the idea" that it's so "easy" to "differentiate" politically when there "are" so "many" crazy "politicians" right now. "In fact," the President-"elect" "himself" denies "climate change" and could "theoretically" ban people who say it is "scientific fact" from doing so with the type of "precedent" you would set with your "ideas".

Let's not repeat it here though, OK? We don't want to hijack this thread.

Then why did you bring it up in the first place, and why are you continuing to respond to me about it?

Sharks and lightning. Should we ban sharks from the ocean and mandate the installation of lightning rods every ten feet across the continent?
Media bias of picking up these cases as the cause du jour makes this look like a bigger issue than it is.

It's very likely that totally banning anything that looks like that will cause more harm than good.
Any policy change needs to pass the standards of safety (not causing other harmful consequences) and efficacy.

Except it's not sharks and lightning, and anyone dying from bullying matters.

Bullying Suicide: According to the CDC suicide is the third leading cause of death of youth between the ages of 10 and 24. It results in approximately 4400 lives lost each year. Deaths from youth suicide are only part of the problem.

About four and a half thousand people die every year from suicide every year, and it's the THIRD leading cause of death in youth. Doesn't sound like sharks and lightning to me at all.

Sharks injured 13. The US averages just 19 shark attacks each year and one shark-attack fatality every two years. Meanwhile, in the coastal U.S. states alone, lightning strikes and kills more than 37 people each year. Since 1959, Florida has had more shark attacks (603) than lightning fatalities (459)

Yeah, not even close to similar.

I don't think it's clearly enough defined to make it a thing.
The way you defined it, by intention rather than symptomatically (as wanting to cause harm just for fun), is fine, but it's also impractical and borderline impossible (with current technology) to detect.

Personally, I don't think the word liberal is defined very well. Sometimes people use it to refer to leftism that includes economic policy, but sometimes it's only about social issues. Sometimes, it means open to new ideas.

Therefore, "liberals" don't exist.

It needs to happen.

Yeah, I agree that it also needs to happen.

The "bully" -- the human being who is engaging in "bullying" -- is not the root of the problem. The root of the problem is what is causing that person to act that way. And I addressed those too.

Labeling people as "bullies" and saying it's the people who are the problem is not helpful. They don't see themselves that way, and if they do then they're probably psychopaths (in terms of low IQ psychopaths, there's not much you can do about that right now aside from lock them up and throw away the key).
We need to look at the environment that produces these behaviors. If kids are doing it "for fun" it's usually (unless they're psychopathic sadists, which is VERY rare) because they're bored. School activity needs to be more engaging, which will help with learning too. Win-Win.

Many anti-bullying programs treat the issue more as a zero-sum-game and identify bullies as enemies. They're normal kids, for the most part. We need to treat them like it and understand the real causes behind the behavior.

You're "right", it's probably "largely" the "fault" of the bully's "parents."

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't address the action's of the bully.
We shouldn't cater to the bullies and change the curriculum to make them stop. That doesn't change their fundamental mentality. We need school administrators to be RESPONSIBLE and confront them to explain why their actions are bad.

I don't think bullies are "normal kids". That kind of attitude normalizes bullying, which is the opposite of what we need to be doing. Not to mention how it is insulting to most students to equate them with bullies.
I don't think that the girl who made Rebecca Sedwick kill herself and then posted on Facebook that she doesn't give a fuck is like most people.

[brimstoneSalad]

It's not a "thought crime", it's how the law works. Crimes ARE based on motivation, and they should be; it has nothing to do with Big Brother.

If somebody says the exact same thing, the difference between his or her motivation being to harm feelings or to offer critique is what you're picking on to distinguish bullying. Those private motivations are not accessible to the judge. That's the problem with thought crimes; where something is perfectly legal up until the sentiment or motivation changes.

In law there is a distinction between an obvious accident and a deliberate act with motivation, but whether you kill somebody for fun, or with the intent to help that person (because you're some kind of an efilist, perhaps, and you think you're saving the person suffering down the line), both are murder; that's more the distinction we're talking about.

Either way (insult or criticism) it was intentional to say those words to that person.
An accident would be more like you're on the phone and quoting a line from a movie, and you (not paying attention) look at somebody while saying it who takes offense as if it were said to him or her. People usually don't say something by accident.

Are you saying that if the person who heard the speech was accidentally offended, that the speaker should be punished even if it wasn't the intent (like manslaughter)?

Motivation matters as to the character of the criminal and chances of a repeat offense when harm is done, but it's very hard to establish for homicide, and nearly impossible to establish for somebody taking offense to criticism unless the culprit admits to the bullying or brags about it.

I'm not sure if you were necessarily disagreeing with that, but the fact that you used the term thought crime to describe it, which originates (or was popularized) from 1984, makes it sound like you were saying that it's a restriction on important freedoms.

You're not talking about physical acts of violence, you're talking about banning speech based on the private and generally unknown motivations of the speaker.
If it has nothing to do with what the speaker did, but only the private feelings or reasons for doing it (with different motivation it's 100% legal), that's a thought crime.

If you're talking about punishing people who accidentally offend others too, then that's not a thought crime (although banning speech for being offensive is pretty damn close).

Whether or not the girls who harassed Rebecca Sedwick had malintent is NOT ambiguous. At all.

They admitted it (or at least one of them did). If you limit your punishing of bullying to people who openly confess to it and brag about it, that's a little different and will have fewer negative consequences compared to guessing with all of the bias involved.

First of all, no. It could be almost completely or completely because of the bullying.

Dying because somebody shot you in the chest with a gun isn't even completely because of the person shooting at you. If you had on a bullet proof vest, you likely would have lived.
Bullies are not omnipotent. As long as they don't resort to physical violence (and even if they do) there are always means of defending against it. Psychological defenses can range from tissue paper thin to ten foot thick steel walls.

Improving the defenses and coping mechanisms of the victims is a much more reliable and long lasting approach.
If that doesn't work, it's likely due to other variables like depression, anxiety, or another issue that can be dealt with medically.

My point is that trying to address bullying directly is both ineffective and potentially harmful because:
1. It has a chilling effect on the free exchange of ideas (this is a big deal)
2. Prevents other children from building coping mechanisms for later in life (suicide now or later, your pick -- or worse, you create a generation of people like "Trigglypuff" etc. who can't handle things they find offensive or engage with them productively)
3. Creates resentment and distrust of law and authority, and breeds criminal mindset if not done consistently and perfectly (and it never will be perfect until we have mind reading devices).

If you limit anti-bullying policies to admitted bullies, you can avoid most of that, but that's going to be a very rare occurrence.

First of all, with this idea of making a mistakes - if there's cyberbullying, there's evidence, and we know it's not a mistake or someone lying. Do you think we should do something about cyberbullying to stop it?

I think we should ban non-anonymous social media for people under 18. If they didn't have persistent identities online that other students could find and attack, there wouldn't be a problem. E.g. nobody would be on facebook as themselves, and it's never linked to other students. You just join interest groups in closed and/or anonymous communities.

That doesn't make bullying disappear, there's always internet trolling and bullying in any community, but it makes it more manageable when it's not connected to real life.

There should be classes in cyber safety, as well as in how to deal with bullies yourself to develop self esteem and a sense of self worth which won't be shattered by some bullying; which is something that (unlike teachers) will stay with you for life.

The issue of bullying, in classes or in online communities or at work later in life is impossible to completely get away from. People need to be able to manage. Stopping it doesn't help people long-term, teaching them how to deal with it and stop it themselves does.

In cases in which it's not cyberbullying, people still often record bullying incidents, and there's evidence there too. Do you think we should do something about that?

Whether online, or recorded, does the accused bully actually admit to doing it just for fun to hurt the other person?
If not, then no.
Any record is only part of the story.

This could be part of a longer back and forth, where the two parties are in a war of words. Or it could be a failed attempt at discourse or legit criticism. You can't assume it's purely malicious or that it's purely one-sided. Doing so results in problem #3:

3. Creates resentment and distrust of law and authority, and breeds criminal mindset if not done consistently and perfectly (and it never will be perfect until we have mind reading devices).

In a case in which we only have witnesses, those witnesses are valuable. If there are a lot of witnesses, it probably happened.

Witnesses can be biased, or even in on it. It's not reliable.

If it's just the accuser, then the school should keep an eye out to see if they catch anything else, and bring the accused in for a discussion about it.

No, if it's not physical violence, this is not a good use of the school resources.
They should devote their limited resources to preventing violence and school shootings, not preventing kids from saying mean things to each other which they need to learn to deal with on their own for later in life.

Science isn't subjective. It's based explicitly on methodology to eliminate human bias.

And republicans would disagree.

That's not fair. Not the sane ones. Not all republicans deny anthropogenic global warming.

It's up to 47% who accept that the climate is changing:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/many-more-republicans-now-believe-in-climate-change/
Although that poll didn't ask if they believed it was caused by man.

Not many Republican politicians are on the record as accepting climate science, but some are:
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2014/may/18/jerry-brown/jerry-brown-says-virtually-no-republican-believes-/

We found at least eight Republicans in Congress who publicly voiced support for the scientific consensus and many more conservative legislators who deny either a human link to the changing climate, or the fact that the climate is changing altogether.

A reason for caution, however, is comments from someone like Yarnold — who suggest GOP members of Congress acknowledge climate change science behind closed doors but avoid the talk in public for political reasons.

Some of them may be lying about it, but there's no way to know how many, since many are also fundamentalists and believe in the Biblical interpretation.

Republicans disagree with a lot of facts.

Many do, but not all. And the good news at least is that their base is shifting (albeit slowly).

Politicians have the power to make laws that censor certain ideas if you set the precedent that you would with this policy. It's not just about science.

Politicians are not in charge of determining scientific consensus, large bodies of professional scientists are.
They would have to send a bunch of conservatives through school and sneak them into the field to taint the results as recognized scientists.
The problem they would encounter is that, after learning what they have to learn in school to become scientists, the vast majority of them (being human beings with some conscience) would change their minds by the time they got to publishing and being accepted in the scientific community.

No, easily. If they basically control the entire government, as they will in a month, then they have the power to do whatever the hell they want.

It would have to be a constitutional amendment, not just legislation, or the courts would smack it down as a violation of free speech (since it deals with a restriction on free speech).

The amendment would give power to establish scientific consensus to professional bodies of scientists, who would have to sue for recognition through precedent (again, in the courts).
Once you put it in the courts, you force a bunch of people to listen to some very extensive arguments from both sides, and that tends to favor legitimate science. Evolution consistently wins, even when the judge and most of the jury start out as creationists. That's the power of forcefully educating a random sampling of people for weeks before they have the right to decide things. It's not perfect, but it's better than what we have now where decisions are made in ignorance, or out of political expedience for the votes of the ignorant.

President-"elect" "himself" denies "climate change" and could "theoretically" ban people who say it is "scientific fact" from doing so with the type of "precedent" you would set with your "ideas".

He couldn't. He has little power over the courts.

Except it's not sharks and lightning, and anyone dying from bullying matters.

People dying from shark attacks and lightning strikes don't matter to you?

About four and a half thousand people die every year from suicide every year, and it's the THIRD leading cause of death in youth.

A death from a suicide is not a death from school bullying.
Suicides are frequently caused by depression; something like 90% of them, which in turn has many causes.

If you have a problem with death caused by suicide, you have to focus on the leading cause of that cause: depression.
Depression is frequently caused by family trouble, body issues (which can occur with no bullying at all), genetics, and increased by substance abuse.
Bullying CAN cause depression, but you can't point to a very broad cause of death and call that bullying.

Events of suicide clearly linked to bullying are few and far between. That's why they get so much media attention.

Anyway, if you sheltered kids from bullying in school (if that were a significant part of the issue) it would only become an issue after they left school. Then you'd see university level suicides or young people on the job market committing mass suicides as soon as they leave school and enter the real world.
How long can you coddle people? You have to teach them to defend themselves.

Personally, I don't think the word liberal is defined very well. Sometimes people use it to refer to leftism that includes economic policy, but sometimes it's only about social issues. Sometimes, it means open to new ideas.

Therefore, "liberals" don't exist.

There are social liberals and fiscal liberals. Just saying "liberal" probably implies both, but isn't necessarily very descriptive. it would be better to specify.

Unlike bullies, however, people define themselves as "liberal". There's not a significant cultural demographic that identifies as bullies in the way that people identify as being liberal.

Christianity doesn't clearly mean anything either, and yet we have demographic information on people who call themselves that, so it does have some vague meaning.
Bully is almost always pejorative, which makes it different and harder to nail down to any group of people.

Yeah, I agree that it also needs to happen.

So where do we spend our limited resources and time? On programs like those, or on trying to police the student population? On anti-bullying measures which will be unreliable and inconsistent at best and risk causing other problems, or on programs like those that will fix other problems like improving education, and create life long coping skills that will prevent suicides in adults too?

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't address the action's of the bully.

It does if it will create resentment and make the problem worse, and make the "bully" more likely to graduate to a full blown criminal after leaving school. Once you label a kid as a "bully" the golem effect will start kicking in too and make matters worse.

We shouldn't cater to the bullies and change the curriculum to make them stop. That doesn't change their fundamental mentality. We need school administrators to be RESPONSIBLE and confront them to explain why their actions are bad.

There are no bullies, there are only kids. They're all bullies, and they're all friends to somebody too. These are just different relationships. It's part of human psychology.
When you start labeling them bullies and punishing them, you're likely to make the problem worse.

I don't think bullies are "normal kids". That kind of attitude normalizes bullying, which is the opposite of what we need to be doing.

Oh, so you want to alienate them and label them as aberrant, tell them there's something wrong with them and that they're bad. Break their self esteems more than they already are, and make them resentful?

Ever heard of the Stanford prison experiment? When you divide and group people, that in itself can change their behavior for the worse.

You don't want to believe that these kids are normal kids, because that's just too terrifying. Evil is banal.
Sure there are rare psychopathic sadists with low IQs and poor impulse control -- maybe one in a hundred thousand people -- and those people are broken, and they need to be locked up.
The vast majority of bullies are just kids. You could be a bully too in the right environment. You probably have bullied in the past without realizing it.

You actually bullied Republicans in this very thread.
You said things about them, just for fun (I'm sure you didn't think that wasn't important to the discussion), that you know aren't true at their expense and which you know would be offensive to them. Some Republicans reading this thread are probably offended by it. You're a bully, congratulations. You just hurt others' feelings for fun.

Not to mention how it is insulting to most students to equate them with bullies.
I don't think that the girl who made Rebecca Sedwick kill herself and then posted on Facebook that she doesn't give a fuck is like most people.

It's just being realistic. You have to understand that the psychology behind bullying is not unique.
That girl was employing a defense mechanism; she was probably experiencing cognitive dissonance due to what she did. She had convinced herself that this girl deserved it, etc.
She needed to convince herself that she didn't care.

There's a small chance that she's just a psychopath, she's probably just a normal kid.

[brimstoneSalad]

Edited my post above.

[miniboes]

I'm not sure if we're talking about the same kind of bullying here, but if we're just talking about acts and speech that make life unpleasant for other people in social environments, I don't think you have to limit freedom of speech to get rid of bullying at all. Particularly in the case of kids getting bullied I think it can have very bad effects, whether it be worse school results, depression and/or suicide or social isolation and a lack of confidence. Some of these effects could last for a long time.

My high school had a pretty good approach to bullying, where they would assemble a sort of task force composed of the 'bullies' (the word bully never actually gets used), friends of the bullied kid and a teacher. The kids would be asked to reflect on their behavior, try to notice behavior that could be making the other kid feel bad and alert each other if they do. The bullies aren't sanctioned in any way, other than that they may experience a healthy feeling of guilt.

This is not the be all and end all solution to bullying, but I think 'soft' approaches like these can really help somebody experiencing bullying without limiting freedom of speech in any way. In the case of bullying among kids I doubt the need for freedom of speech, but that's besides the point. Adults too can come together and talk about how they're going to deal with an unpleasant social situation. It happens all the time.

I think we must be careful, as people opposed to SJW's, not to swing around to the other extreme and allow completely unnecessary suffering to occur. As with everything, it's not an either-or situation. We do not need to choose between a PC police running around kindergartens and no interventions on bullying at all.