3 ms·

You really haven’t engaged with my last comment, you’re just continuing your previous comment. Your doubling down on your attempt to compare harassing a black s

You really haven’t engaged with my last comment, you’re just continuing your previous comment. Your doubling down on your attempt to compare harassing a black shoplifter and people’s initial replies to the GP is quite telling. I think you’re purposely looking for something to disagree with on this issue so that you can count some sort of moral victory. I said I wouldn’t respond, but you wrote this: > I think you owe the poster an apology, not dismissive instructions to "chill". So for the record, no, I absolutely and without qualification* do not apologize, and yes, you and the GP need to step back as I have said and reevaluate objectively. The GP’s post clarifies that he is not a sex tourist. But as others have pointed out, his original post makes that suspicion entirely reasonable. Please don’t expect further replies from me, I haven’t gained anything from this conversation and I don’t think you have either. EDIT: I will allow the qualification that this is obviously a painful subject to discuss, and ideally we could avoid pain like this altogether. But whatever bizarre viewpoint you are arguing is not one that will lead to less pain for those in loving relationships involving people from those countries, and it is not one which will help with the very real problem of sex tourism. If I see a post like the GP’s again, I will reply the same way (note I was not even replying to him, but rather explaining why people replied they way they did).

tripletao 8y ago
What have I failed to engage with? I am looking at this from the perspective of ordinary people who live, visit, or do business in that region. While sex tourism is a problem, I believe those ordinary people outnumber the sex tourists. I understand that the context in which you encounter SE Asia may be mostly reports of sex tourism. For me, it is not--it's just another place I've had meetings. I think sex tourism there is around the same level as something like the opiate epidemic in the USA--something most people are aware of, but not something that directly touches most people's lives. There are many poor people, and there's also an educated professional class. There's little "tech" by the standards of California venture capitalists, but lots of manufacturing. This exchange began when you posted a comment that I suspect caused some pain to a guy who (we have no good reason to doubt) was engaged in a loving relationship with someone from that region. Now, you've just said that your viewpoint is better than mine, by that specific standard. How do you make that consistent? If I said that it was "entirely reasonable" to suspect that the black shoppers were thieves, on the basis of your Bayesian statistics, then I suspect you would call me a racist. I think you would be right. Where does the analogy fail here? It's wrong even though they really are more likely to be shoplifters, if we do statistics considering nothing but the color of their skin. That correlation by itself is not a reason to act, before considering the size of the correlation, and the social consequences to the group that you're about to harm. If you see a post like his again, then you could reply "They are probably thinking of sex tourism. That's a bad problem in the region, which then also casts a hurtful shadow on any relationship between a local woman and foreign man. I hope any foreign man who dates there does so with respect for this problem." Why not?

tripletao 8y ago

What have I failed to engage with? I am looking at this from the perspective of ordinary people who live, visit, or do business in that region. While sex tourism is a problem, I believe those ordinary people outnumber the sex tourists. I understand that the context in which you encounter SE Asia may be mostly reports of sex tourism. For me, it is not--it's just another place I've had meetings. I think sex tourism there is around the same level as something like the opiate epidemic in the USA--something most people are aware of, but not something that directly touches most people's lives. There are many poor people, and there's also an educated professional class. There's little "tech" by the standards of California venture capitalists, but lots of manufacturing. This exchange began when you posted a comment that I suspect caused some pain to a guy who (we have no good reason to doubt) was engaged in a loving relationship with someone from that region. Now, you've just said that your viewpoint is better than mine, by that specific standard. How do you make that consistent? If I said that it was "entirely reasonable" to suspect that the black shoppers were thieves, on the basis of your Bayesian statistics, then I suspect you would call me a racist. I think you would be right. Where does the analogy fail here? It's wrong even though they really are more likely to be shoplifters, if we do statistics considering nothing but the color of their skin. That correlation by itself is not a reason to act, before considering the size of the correlation, and the social consequences to the group that you're about to harm. If you see a post like his again, then you could reply "They are probably thinking of sex tourism. That's a bad problem in the region, which then also casts a hurtful shadow on any relationship between a local woman and foreign man. I hope any foreign man who dates there does so with respect for this problem." Why not?