5 ms·

This is circular reasoning. "We're not any nicer to weirdos. How do I know? Well, because the subset of people we're still not nice to, we're not nice to!" Ba

This is circular reasoning. "We're not any nicer to weirdos. How do I know? Well, because the subset of people we're still not nice to, we're not nice to!" Bare minimum, there's always going to be some demographic ostracized by society, even if that demographic is only, like, murderous cannibals. Only looking at whichever demographics are currently treated poorly to evaluate how society treats the people who it treats poorly means you've fixed the "niceness to weirdos" quotient in place by definition.

082349872349872 6y ago
A society which truly integrated their murderous cannibals would reserve bbq spots in the park for them. But no, they just have to put up with the cold shoulder.
- igravious 6y ago
  Would you rather we get cold feet or that they have to put up with the cold shoulder?
  - throwanem 6y ago
    Well, that's the point. Give them a grill and the shoulder won't be cold any more.
leto_ii 6y ago
I would qualify murderous cannibals as dangerous criminals, not weirdos. Weirdos are people who aren't doing anything wrong, but who are ostracized for not conforming to arbitrary social norms.
- monadic2 6y ago
  I’d imagine most cannibals who ever lived were not breaking the law at all. This may hold true even today. It reminds me of a joke, “why do people refer to me as a cannibal? I think it’s my woodwork that defines me. Why not call me a woodworker?”
  - leto_ii 6y ago
    I don't know enough anthropology to debate that, but my feeling is that even in societies where cannibalism was allowed there were clear rules around it. I expect that you wouldn't just be able to kill and eat people randomly.
    - monadic2 6y ago
      Yes, this is absolutely true, I was just lightly teasing the use of “criminal” as a moral thing.
  - wuliwong 6y ago
    The murderous part implies they are criminals. :)
    - monadic2 6y ago
      For societies that viewed this as a crime, anyway. For instance, many don’t consider military engagements to be murder but others do, and regardless whether or not you might consider it a crime depends deeply on your geopolitical beliefs. Anyway, there are even cultures (now extinct I think) that eat their own dead as a form of mourning. Ritualistic cannibalism is a whole thing that is not criminal and it’s been found on every continent where humans naturally live. Many societies don’t even have states to define or enforce crimes. So yea, I think most cannibals were probably not criminals.
      - tsimionescu 6y ago
        > Anyway, there are even cultures (now extinct I think) that eat their own dead as a form of mourning. Yes, but you wouldn't call those people murderous cannibals, would you? Murderous implies that you murdered someone. Now, true, one man's liberator is another man's murderer, but someone who has not killed anyone can't be called murderous any way you stretch it, even if they are a cannibal. So, even if you are right that most cannibals were not criminals, I think it's safe to say, as GP did, that murderous cannibals are criminals.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  Yeah, I was just trying to use an extreme example. > Weirdos are people who aren't doing anything wrong That's the thing, though: what is "wrong" is very different society to society. Sometimes it includes decisions that don't directly hurt anyone, but can hurt them indirectly (e.g. choosing not to be vaccinated).
jaspax 6y ago
... yes? Of course I look at the subset of people who are today counted as weirdos. How else would one evaluate the social treatment of weirdos? If you're going to argue a change, I think that you need to show that either (1) the total number of people considered "weirdos" has changed, or (2) weirdos are no longer treated as poorly. I find (2) very implausible (and notice that in the linked article, the people in question are responding to very mild forms of social disapproval), and I don't think that (1) really holds up, but I'm willing to hear an argument.
- bryanrasmussen 6y ago
  I find 2) to be a very real possibility - first off in the To Kill A Mockingbird not sure how mild his social ostracism, furthermore what would his punishment for being a weirdo have been if he hadn't hit on the convenient cover of being a drunk (and as I recall wasn't he descended from a rich family?) As far as 1) the example of Doc's two weird bits seem pretty benign. This is the argument that would well it seems pretty benign to us but perhaps there are things that are weird to us but that back then would have seemed benign. As a general thing anything I can think of that would be considered weird enough nowadays to get you kicked out of a Diner would have been considered weird enough decades back to get you kicked out, if not the police called on you. If your theory is that there were things considered benign in the past that would get you thrown out of a Diner today you should show what those are, the nearest I can think of is having the trophy head of an African Elephant with you, but I bet you wouldn't get thrown out of almost anywhere for that unless it was just too big to have in the place. Maybe try Bengal Tiger, wouldn't be bad. Dressed up as a member of the KKK would hopefully get you kicked out of a lot of places today, but I'm not sure if it wouldn't have got you kicked out in 1935. At any rate I'm not sure if it would have been considered benign actually, despite membership's popularity during that time.
- TulliusCicero 6y ago
  > ... yes? Of course I look at the subset of people who are today counted as weirdos. How else would one evaluate the social treatment of weirdos? Using the same reasoning, one could say, "treatment of X group of weirdos hasn't gotten any better because society treats weirdos better; it's just that X has become somewhat more socially acceptable". For example, you could apply this reasoning to, say, furries. Probably more accepted now than 20 or 30 years ago, but still considered weird. If that's the model, then it's impossible for society to become more accepting of weirdos in general, because each time they become more accepting of some particular group, you just attribute the change to "social acceptability" of that group, rather than niceness to weirdos more generally. With the end game being, "sure, everyone is nice to everyone now, but it's not because we became nicer to weirdos, but because now everything is socially acceptable and nothing is considered weird." It's a useless way of measuring things because it makes progress literally impossible by definition.
kls 6y ago
Well being a cannibal is a self limiting demographic, I mean you peer group is bound to shrink. It has to be a pretty lonely.
- NikolaeVarius 6y ago
  Would it be a social taboo to eat a fellow cannibal since by definition it would reduce to size of the ingroup?
- firethief 6y ago
  Historically most groups that have practiced cannibalism over long periods didn't use it as their exclusive source of sustenance...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

082349872349872 6y ago

A society which truly integrated their murderous cannibals would reserve bbq spots in the park for them. But no, they just have to put up with the cold shoulder.

igravious 6y ago
Would you rather we get cold feet or that they have to put up with the cold shoulder?
- throwanem 6y ago
  Well, that's the point. Give them a grill and the shoulder won't be cold any more.

leto_ii 6y ago

I would qualify murderous cannibals as dangerous criminals, not weirdos. Weirdos are people who aren't doing anything wrong, but who are ostracized for not conforming to arbitrary social norms.

monadic2 6y ago
I’d imagine most cannibals who ever lived were not breaking the law at all. This may hold true even today. It reminds me of a joke, “why do people refer to me as a cannibal? I think it’s my woodwork that defines me. Why not call me a woodworker?”
- leto_ii 6y ago
  I don't know enough anthropology to debate that, but my feeling is that even in societies where cannibalism was allowed there were clear rules around it. I expect that you wouldn't just be able to kill and eat people randomly.
  - monadic2 6y ago
    Yes, this is absolutely true, I was just lightly teasing the use of “criminal” as a moral thing.
- wuliwong 6y ago
  The murderous part implies they are criminals. :)
  - monadic2 6y ago
    For societies that viewed this as a crime, anyway. For instance, many don’t consider military engagements to be murder but others do, and regardless whether or not you might consider it a crime depends deeply on your geopolitical beliefs. Anyway, there are even cultures (now extinct I think) that eat their own dead as a form of mourning. Ritualistic cannibalism is a whole thing that is not criminal and it’s been found on every continent where humans naturally live. Many societies don’t even have states to define or enforce crimes. So yea, I think most cannibals were probably not criminals.
    - tsimionescu 6y ago
      > Anyway, there are even cultures (now extinct I think) that eat their own dead as a form of mourning. Yes, but you wouldn't call those people murderous cannibals, would you? Murderous implies that you murdered someone. Now, true, one man's liberator is another man's murderer, but someone who has not killed anyone can't be called murderous any way you stretch it, even if they are a cannibal. So, even if you are right that most cannibals were not criminals, I think it's safe to say, as GP did, that murderous cannibals are criminals.
TulliusCicero 6y ago
Yeah, I was just trying to use an extreme example. > Weirdos are people who aren't doing anything wrong That's the thing, though: what is "wrong" is very different society to society. Sometimes it includes decisions that don't directly hurt anyone, but can hurt them indirectly (e.g. choosing not to be vaccinated).

jaspax 6y ago

... yes? Of course I look at the subset of people who are today counted as weirdos. How else would one evaluate the social treatment of weirdos? If you're going to argue a change, I think that you need to show that either (1) the total number of people considered "weirdos" has changed, or (2) weirdos are no longer treated as poorly. I find (2) very implausible (and notice that in the linked article, the people in question are responding to very mild forms of social disapproval), and I don't think that (1) really holds up, but I'm willing to hear an argument.

bryanrasmussen 6y ago
I find 2) to be a very real possibility - first off in the To Kill A Mockingbird not sure how mild his social ostracism, furthermore what would his punishment for being a weirdo have been if he hadn't hit on the convenient cover of being a drunk (and as I recall wasn't he descended from a rich family?) As far as 1) the example of Doc's two weird bits seem pretty benign. This is the argument that would well it seems pretty benign to us but perhaps there are things that are weird to us but that back then would have seemed benign. As a general thing anything I can think of that would be considered weird enough nowadays to get you kicked out of a Diner would have been considered weird enough decades back to get you kicked out, if not the police called on you. If your theory is that there were things considered benign in the past that would get you thrown out of a Diner today you should show what those are, the nearest I can think of is having the trophy head of an African Elephant with you, but I bet you wouldn't get thrown out of almost anywhere for that unless it was just too big to have in the place. Maybe try Bengal Tiger, wouldn't be bad. Dressed up as a member of the KKK would hopefully get you kicked out of a lot of places today, but I'm not sure if it wouldn't have got you kicked out in 1935. At any rate I'm not sure if it would have been considered benign actually, despite membership's popularity during that time.
TulliusCicero 6y ago
> ... yes? Of course I look at the subset of people who are today counted as weirdos. How else would one evaluate the social treatment of weirdos? Using the same reasoning, one could say, "treatment of X group of weirdos hasn't gotten any better because society treats weirdos better; it's just that X has become somewhat more socially acceptable". For example, you could apply this reasoning to, say, furries. Probably more accepted now than 20 or 30 years ago, but still considered weird. If that's the model, then it's impossible for society to become more accepting of weirdos in general, because each time they become more accepting of some particular group, you just attribute the change to "social acceptability" of that group, rather than niceness to weirdos more generally. With the end game being, "sure, everyone is nice to everyone now, but it's not because we became nicer to weirdos, but because now everything is socially acceptable and nothing is considered weird." It's a useless way of measuring things because it makes progress literally impossible by definition.

kls 6y ago

Well being a cannibal is a self limiting demographic, I mean you peer group is bound to shrink. It has to be a pretty lonely.

NikolaeVarius 6y ago
Would it be a social taboo to eat a fellow cannibal since by definition it would reduce to size of the ingroup?
firethief 6y ago
Historically most groups that have practiced cannibalism over long periods didn't use it as their exclusive source of sustenance...

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]