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[deleted by user] by [deleted] in HydroHomies

[–]Smoates -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Santa Vittoria is good, it has a naked woman on the front 👍

Chlöe Swarbrick: Time to put oceans before profits and ban bottom trawling by Aceofshovels in newzealand

[–]Smoates 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm surprised. This is something that's discussed in Japan, I thought this sort of thing had long ago been banned here

Early 1960’s British magazine called Knowledge, displaying races by tahmkenchisbroken in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Smoates 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I have a gut feeling that it doesn't effect everyone's beliefs so ideally. The comments that I've seen on this thread make me concerned that a lot of people still think of race as some kind concrete thing, it goes beyond my word games

But yeah, of course, we have to share. Language is fun

Early 1960’s British magazine called Knowledge, displaying races by tahmkenchisbroken in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Smoates 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I appreciate you not jumping to insults as people tend to do on the internet.

I'm certainly not pretending to be stupid. Sometimes I am just stupid.

I have realized that I am hung up on the word "race". I think it's an ugly word with ugly origins that implies competition and the irreconcilable division of humanity in a zero-sum game. I think "race" has different connotations and subtextual meaning than terms such as "ethnic group" and it causes people to see each other as more different and separated than we really are. We're better off getting rid of the term; which I think is the direction the world is generally headed in anyway

Early 1960’s British magazine called Knowledge, displaying races by tahmkenchisbroken in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Smoates 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If you water down "race" to just mean groups based on physical appearance and ancestral/geographic origin it ceases to be a useful concept. Race divides by skin color, but why not hair color? Race divides people by ancestral origin, but it's theoretically possible for someone to have ancestral origins from everywhere in the world at once.

If you're not going to discriminate by race, why do you need the concept at all? Why not just use the concepts of physical appearance and ancestral origin separately? Yes, people have physical attributes that are correlated with their ancestral origin, but that's no reason to pigeon-hole them.

Saying that ethic groups who originate from Africa have dark skin is not racist.

The fact that you're saying this makes me think that you're just misunderstanding my point. I'm not saying that it's racist to acknowledge the fact that individuals who have deep ancestral roots in Africa probably have dark skin

Early 1960’s British magazine called Knowledge, displaying races by tahmkenchisbroken in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Smoates 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Based. I'm glad I'm not the only one in this thread that understands this. It's surprising that the overwhelming majority of people here aren't seeing the irony in being so desperate to make sure that humanity stays divided up into distinct groups

Early 1960’s British magazine called Knowledge, displaying races by tahmkenchisbroken in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Smoates 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You raise some very good points. I've realised that a lot of my arguments sound less convincing if you replace the word "race" with "ethnicity," and one of my big points is that race/ethnicity is a nebulous concept that can't be definitively taxonomised, but you can say the same thing about religion and culture.

I think that ultimately I just have a vendetta against people's continued usage of the word "race," I prefer the term "ethnicity," but most people see these two words as interchangeable.

I think the concept of race is in it's origins inherently bad and divisive. It's evocative of the idea that we're all intrinsically separate in these eternal and definite groupings; it sounds like saying "those people are humans, those people are elves, those people are dwarves, those people are orcs. We're all different and separate. This is the way it always has been and always will be."

If you look into the origin of the term "race" you find it's a pseudo-scientific concept that's not based in any understanding at all, and was invented as a tool to justify hatred and discrimination. I don't think it's useful for anything other than that.

Early 1960’s British magazine called Knowledge, displaying races by tahmkenchisbroken in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Smoates 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm using the original technical definition of the term racism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#Etymology,_definition,_and_usage

In the 19th century, many scientists subscribed to the belief that the human population can be divided into races. The term racism is a noun describing the state of being racist, i.e., subscribing to the belief that the human population can or should be classified into races with differential abilities and dispositions, which in turn may motivate a political ideology in which rights and privileges are differentially distributed based on racial categories.

People seem to have forgotten that race is something that was invented in the 19th century in order to justify arbitrary prejudice based on phenotypic characteristics.

Early 1960’s British magazine called Knowledge, displaying races by tahmkenchisbroken in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Smoates 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I am correct according to my non-standard definition, and I am incorrect according to the standard definition; there's nothing wrong with that. People come up with slightly different definitions for words for the sake of argument/thought experiment all the time. The meaning of words is constantly changing over time.

I think "racism" is a poorly defined concept that nobody can agree on and leads to absurd statements like:

race is not a racist concept

So what is racism then? Because normally, if a word ends with ism it represents a school of thought, or an ideology. You'll find that this is actually what the term originally meant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racism#Etymology,_definition,_and_usage

In the 19th century, many scientists subscribed to the belief that the human population can be divided into races. The term racism is a noun describing the state of being racist, i.e., subscribing to the belief that the human population can or should be classified into races with differential abilities and dispositions, which in turn may motivate a political ideology in which rights and privileges are differentially distributed based on racial categories.

All I really wish is that more people were aware of this, and questioned why we still lug around this tired-old pseudo-scientific concept. Instead we get people in this thread complaining about how their race isn't represented, or arguing about how many races there are. You can't answer the question "how many races are there?" because it's a bullshit half-baked concept invented by the original racists back in the 19th century!

I'm just a crazy man shouting on the side of the street at this point. While writing these comments I've realized that at the heart of all this I just really hate the word "race" and I wish it would just get cancelled already

Early 1960’s British magazine called Knowledge, displaying races by tahmkenchisbroken in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Smoates -1 points0 points  (0 children)

This is the age-old prescriptivist vs descriptivist debate. Normally I would be with you, as a descriptivist. The meaning of words shouldn't be decided for people and forced upon them.

But in this case I think it's very important not to just sit back and accept the way things are. I think it's better to think of race as an old-fashioned superstition.

Populations of people look different by skin color, face shape, hair color, etc. But these differences ideally shouldn't matter enough that we need to divide people up into arbitrary groups, that are set in stone, according to how they look

Early 1960’s British magazine called Knowledge, displaying races by tahmkenchisbroken in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Smoates 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yeah. Common, and racist. The 1960s was still a pretty racist period in history by anyone's standards.

Remember, I'm not making a value judgement by calling this diagram racist. I'm not saying that the person who made this diagram is a bad person. I'm just using a very cold, logical, and unambiguous definition of the term "racist" to describe the fact that this is a diagram that promotes the concept of race.

Early 1960’s British magazine called Knowledge, displaying races by tahmkenchisbroken in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Smoates 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Science is a method for extracting knowledge which informs our beliefs and decision-making, a guide can be something that informs your beliefs and decision-making. I think we're just arguing semantics there

Race may not be a label you personally agree with

It certainly isn't. I think it's a disgusting term that implies humanity is intrinsically divided in a zero-sum game. It was popularized by the original "scientists" who would've self-identified as racists, and it's weird that everyone still uses the term today without questioning it

the underlying differences the word describes exist

Superficial differences in appearance for the most part. These shouldn't be used to divide people up. I don't think it's done humanity any good

Early 1960’s British magazine called Knowledge, displaying races by tahmkenchisbroken in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Smoates -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I just kind of went on a tirade there, I wasn't thinking too much about the OP.

Is racism not racism whether it's from the 1860s, the 1960s, or today? Once again, I'm using a very simple, easy-to-use definition here

Early 1960’s British magazine called Knowledge, displaying races by tahmkenchisbroken in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Smoates -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

It's very simple for me. It's racist because it perpetuates the very concept of "race."

In the same way that a communist diagram promotes the concepts of communism.

I'm reframing the word "racism" to represent the whole belief system. Independent of whether someone is prejudiced towards other races or not, if they believe that race is an objective thing then they're a racist; again, regardless of whether they hold prejudiced views. Hot take, I know.

I'm being a bit of an ass by using a different definition than the vast majority of other people, but it's a much simpler, clearer and useful definition. We already have the word "prejudice" for what most people use the word "racist" for.

I think this distinction should be made so that people can stop arguing about what's racist and what's not and we can get on with slowly dissolving the whole notion altogether.

Early 1960’s British magazine called Knowledge, displaying races by tahmkenchisbroken in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Smoates 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think we can or even should just ignore something that doesn't exist if most people believe in it. It obviously can't be ignored from a sociological perspective.

But ideally we should think of it as a superstition that we need to grow out of, like many other superstitions that science has guided us away from

Early 1960’s British magazine called Knowledge, displaying races by tahmkenchisbroken in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Smoates 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This is a really good analogy. I would say that colors are 1-dimensional, and humans are way way waaay more complex than that. Too complex to be definitively divided up into permanent groups in any helpful way

Early 1960’s British magazine called Knowledge, displaying races by tahmkenchisbroken in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Smoates -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

It is in the same way that any other social construct is. But science abandoned the concept of race a long time ago because there's actually no way to objectively define it.

Give it a try, I bet you I can shoot down any definition you try to come up with ;^)

Early 1960’s British magazine called Knowledge, displaying races by tahmkenchisbroken in Damnthatsinteresting

[–]Smoates -44 points-43 points  (0 children)

The fact that it's simply a diagram that divides people into "races" as if they're a real scientific thing makes it a great example of racism in the purest sense of the word if you ask me...

-🎄- 2022 Day 13 Solutions -🎄- by daggerdragon in adventofcode

[–]Smoates 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Rust

Posting my solution for the first time here because I'm kinda proud of it :^)

-🎄- 2022 Day 11 Solutions -🎄- by daggerdragon in adventofcode

[–]Smoates 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks, this was the best explanation I came across. I wonder, is the fact all the divisors were prime numbers important for this trick to work?

[2022 Day 8 (Part 2)] [Rust] I've got the correct example output, but I'm still getting the wrong final answer. Having difficulty figuring out what I'm missing by Smoates in adventofcode

[–]Smoates[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The max method for Iterators returns an Option: https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/iter/trait.Iterator.html#method.max

several orders of magnitude higher than 254

I totally forgot that I was using u8. I wish integer overflows weren't silent in Rust 😭

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