Where’s the line in the sand?

[BehindBlueI's]

If I wanted to go walk around SE DC, I am free to do that. I am also free to walk around SE DC with a racially charged shirt as well, but am I to blame if I get my ass beat and possibly killed? Fuck yes I am responsible.

I'd suggest the ass-beater is responsible and you're a contributing factor.

On a somewhat related note, I just sat through 8 hours of implicit bias training that included a mix of LEOs and various community members. One guy was such a SJW he couldn't admit he'd feel some threat if 6 black males with guns drawn were walking toward him on the sidewalk. Obviously he's much too PC to be threatened by black males in any situation. It was an interest conversation, if one he and I could find very little common ground on. Figured I'd mention it as I had said upthread I'm seldom in the same setting as the SJW crowd.

Honestly, I thought *most* of the class was worth the time, but some of it was kind of filler or the instructors didn't fully understand the material. I was glad to see it wasn't all LEOs and that other perspectives were present, including those who don't necessarily like us. It wasn't presented as "your racist assholes who need to change this, this, and this" it was actually about bias and heuristics in decision making and how that affects social interaction. Pretty decent program. I was familiar with a lot of the material from reading the same authors and papers as I dug into decision making under stress, but I'd never applied it in quite the way they presented.

A lot of it reminded me of this thread and similar conversations, particularly with confirmation bias. Beyond the scope of this thread, I might go further in depth in the LE sub-forum of how that different perspective played out even in non-LE related scenarios. Example, video of several black children barely old enough to speak conversationally selecting a white doll to play with over a black doll and saying the white doll was the nice one. Civilians were more likely to say "racism". Cops were more likely to not answer, but instead ask a question like "what's the child's home life like, and is their teacher white or black?"

[critter]

... Pretty decent program. I was familiar with a lot of the material from reading the same authors and papers as I dug into decision making under stress, but I'd never applied it in quite the way they presented.

Would you mind sharing those authors/sources? Is this something available to the public?

[ubervic]

The operative term is confirmation bias.

[BehindBlueI's]

Would you mind sharing those authors/sources? Is this something available to the public?

I don't know where it came from. Somebody outside the department came for "train the trainer" stuff, but I don't know the vendor. Daniel Kahneman and Malcolm Gladwell are referred to (they've got books for the layman like "Thinking Fast and Slow" and "Blink", respectively). I'd suggest starting with those books, along with "Nudge".

It helps to recognize the terminology. Bias doesn't mean racism or even negative interaction. A ton of it isn't even about social interaction. If I ask you to get my sandwich for me and you go in my office to see a fishing tackle box, a lunch box, and a document safe you are going to (without even consciously thinking about it) open my lunch box and ignore the other boxes. That's bias. You know through your experience that sandwiches are much more likely to be found in the lunch box then the other containers even though they *could* hold a sandwich. We'd be paralyzed if we didn't have those biases to automate much of our decision making. Learning your biases and being self-aware can help you ensure you're being fair with others, and you don't do the same "this is where sandwiches come from" unthinkingly to people. It's not "you're a racist and didn't even know it" which is, unfortunately, what I hear a lot of these programs boil down to.

[rob_s]

The right is to blame for marginalizing the lower social classes for so long. The left is to blame becasue, when they finally got someone from a low social class elected, they were not gracious victors.

Trump is a reaction to 8 years of Obama’s.

At what age do you think someone becomes politically and socially aware? 15? That means that anyone that is 17-27 became politically aware during the Obama years. This also happens to be a huge group in terms of generations, the millenials. So for young people today, who only have ever known the world as an Obama world, the Trump world seems like something totally alien.

So I posted this yesterday and then went and spent the whole day at the Newport Folk Festival. I kept coming back to this concept over and over again as I listened to artist after artist lament the current Staten of things, and as I walked past a booth they have set up with phones and scripts for you to call your Congresscritter, and saw scores of t-shirts spouting various left-leaning concepts...

There really is a sense of despair among these people. And I think it stems from what I described above about not knowing the world any differently, and suddenly my being confronted with the fact that Theresa a whole bunch of Americans, possibly even a majority, that don’t agree with their view.

Even today when you watch the news, opinions are stated as facts because to them they *are* facts.

Today and tomorrow here should be interesting. This is my fourth time here since 2014 and every year has gotten a little more overtly lefty. I’m here for the music and because we love the town but it’s getting to be a bit much.

[HCountyGuy]

Figured this thread could warrant a revisit since it’s fairly relevant to the current shenanigans.

[Casual Friday]

Spoiler alert.

Shit's still crazy out there fam.