Current Events > A teacher was fired for asking a though experiment question, was it justified?

(+) Yeah! (+)

averagejoel posted...

they're certainly doing a better job contextualizing it than that article you linked in the first post

If his topic about covid-19 is any indication, he deliberately misrepresents his sources

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Like, I'm really for really strong employee protection against people being fired, but I wish the anti cancel culture people didn't swing so much to the other side where they just believe everything is being done unfairly.

I'm just annoyed right now, but a lot of shit always seems like "we're just asking questions, black people should be able to not take these questions so personally." While in a different topic, "no, you must not use the term whiteness or it will cause white students to feel discriminated against and hurt their feelings."

Fucking culture war bullshit

People are sensitive. The answer is both should be brought up as carefully as possible.
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emblem boy posted...

Like, I'm really for really strong employee protection against people being fired, but I wish the anti cancel culture people didn't swing so much to the other side where they just believe everything is being done unfairly.

I'm just annoyed right now, but a lot of shit always seems like "we're just asking questions, black people should be able to not take these questions so personally." While in a different topic, "no, you must not use the term whiteness or it will cause white students to feel discriminated against and hurt their feelings. In fact let's get some laws out there to minimize this happening"

Fucking culture war bullshit

People are sensitive. The answer is both should be brought up as carefully as possible.

You are touching on like 8 different things there. I'm no fan of culture wars. People shouldn't treat shit like wars they should deal with things as a function of actual reality.

But, I don't see how this topic is "swinging so much to the other side".

You can look at the lecture and the question being asked. It seems like a perfectly appropriate question as a discussion prompt.

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DarkRoast posted...

If his topic about covid-19 is any indication, he deliberately misrepresents his sources

Who did I deliberately misrepresent? If you are going to make a claim like that, be specific.

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joe40001 posted...

You can look at the lecture and the question being asked. It seems like a perfectly appropriate question as a discussion prompt.

But what actually happened during the discussion is what people are asking. I don't know what happened, I just hope more info comes out
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Teacher makes class think about uncomfortable facts from history (a.k.a. doing his job) and he gets fired.

What in the literal fuck is the world becoming?

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joe40001 posted...

lol sorry,

You mistook me communicating in the same manner as you communicate as me actually becoming a fucking moron.

becoming

lel
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sktgamer_13dude posted...

becoming

lel

When you try to reflect my own dunk on you back at me I'll just take that as a complement on the dunk.

So thank you.

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emblem boy posted...

But what actually happened during the discussion is what people are asking. I don't know what happened, I just hope more info comes out

I like info to, but when we have discussions like this we are always going to have incomplete information. I think everybody's response isn't "this is definitely the right response..." but rather "given the information as I currently understand it..."

Like we can say "ok sure, he might have said the n-word 20 times in the discussion and nobody mentioned it ever" but come on. Like the people trying to take him down are motivated to remember the worst thing he said and even they are saying "it was offensive because it was a thought experiment about the pros and cons of that trade which they interpreted to mean 'defending slavery' "

And like even if it was a thought experiment about slavery, to understand slavery in a historical context it's worth it to consider what the people who were doing it were thinking. How it made economic sense to them, etc. This is obviously not a defense of it, but if you can't even have the discussion in college which is supposed to be about exploring ideas freely about the pros/cons of something that even involved slavery without getting fired? Then society really is lost.

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joe40001 posted...

When you try to reflect my own dunk on you back at me I'll just take that as a complement on the dunk.

So thank you.

You really need to work on your reading skills if you thought I was complimenting you.
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I know I've been wrong on believing in people before, but I think most people are on the wrong side of Hanlon's when it comes to joe.

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Bishop9800 posted...

Why would you think there was some "positives" to the slave trade TC?

Not TC but I'll bite. If you ignore morality it was positive for everyone but the slaves. That pesky morality though is what makes the "positives" not worth the negatives

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mooreandrew58 posted...

Not TC but I'll bite. If you ignore morality it was positive for everyone but the slaves. That pesky morality though is what makes the "positives" not worth the negatives

Yep, in a college if you can't even say something like this in a thought experiment you are in serious trouble.

Also people who ask this question seem to be under the assumption that in the past slavery was done because a lot of evil racists got off on it or something and literally 0 other reason.

Which is further evidence why we need a better academic system so people don't reach their adult lives thinking such a dumb thing.

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Yes, the firing was 100% justified

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joe40001 posted...

Also people who ask this question seem to be under the assumption that in the past slavery was done because a lot of evil racists got off on it or something and literally 0 other reason.

[citation needed]

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Bishop9800 posted...

Why would you think there was some "positives" to the slave trade TC?

I mean even some really vile shit can indeed have some postive results. If someone views it as a net positive though they are an evil fucking piece of shit or some hopeless indoctrinated 13 year old who really really needs better parents.

A lot of medical advances have come from deeply unethical experiments and much of our technological advances.

But yes whatever boons slavery may have brought to certain people and whatever small wierd positives it may somehow have brought about directly or indirectly absolutely was not worth the much greater evils and problems it brought about. Pretty sure there was even recent research showing slavery was less economically efficient overall for much of its history then just paying regular workers.

The USA still has a huge portion of its racism, violence and poverty that hold us back as nation tied to the legacy of slavery. We are still paying for our sins as a nation to this day(sadly often the ancestors of those who were slaves bear the worst burden)and we still won't take proper steps to fix it.

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averagejoel posted...

[citation needed]

They did it cause it was cheap labor. I wouldnt call it free they did have to feed them provide shelter etc. Still morally wrong as fuck just saying they did it for their (the slave owners) benefit. Pure evil/getting off on it would make slaves do hard labor for the sake being mean to them. Which im sure probably did happen in some cases.

Idk cause I wasnt around back then I just always figured it boiled down more to they viewed them as inferior and only useful in the same capacity as a work animal rather than doing it out of hate. I felt the hate came from them suddenly getting rights and shit and being bitter they lost their cheap labor. Then the hate was just passed on from one generation to the next.

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Sounds like a project to understand why slavery was a thing. When I was in middle school my history class was divided in half. We were acting as Congress just before the civil war. One half was north and the other was south. The southern states had to defend their right to slavery and the. Keith argued against it. It wasnt a big deal at all but Im sure people here would be up in arms against a harmless exercise.

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averagejoel posted...

[citation needed]

The question:
"Why would you think there was some "positives" to the slave trade TC?"

Implies that there are no positives to the slave trade. Which implies it was done for no reason except idk racism or something.

Slavery is incredibly immoral. But it wasn't done for no reason. Like mooreandrew said:
If you ignore morality [slavery] was positive for everyone but the slaves. That pesky morality though is what makes the "positives" not worth the negatives

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fan357 posted...

Sounds like a project to understand why slavery was a thing. When I was in middle school my history class was divided in half. We were acting as Congress just before the civil war. One half was north and the other was south. The southern states had to defend their right to slavery and the. Keith argued against it. It wasnt a big deal at all but Im sure people here would be up in arms against a harmless exercise.

Don't provide details of your former teacher because some people here would likely try to get them fired.

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joe40001 posted...

The question:
"Why would you think there was some "positives" to the slave trade TC?"

Implies that there are no positives to the slave trade. Which implies it was done for no reason except idk racism or something.

Slavery is incredibly immoral. But it wasn't done for no reason. Like mooreandrew said:
If you ignore morality [slavery] was positive for everyone but the slaves. That pesky morality though is what makes the "positives" not worth the negatives

It was also a negative for unskilled workers.

Why pay someone to do simple labor when you can buy some slaves and make that investment back many times over on free labor? I am sure it didn't make the labor market any easier for poorer less skilled whites.

It was mostly good for the wealthy whites.(or whatever the wealthy class was in other slavery practicing cultures/eras)

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Didnt read topic, the whole argument on the positives of the Transatlantic trade boils down to we dont think we could have done anything without slavery.


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pikachupwnage posted...

It was also a negative for unskilled workers.

Why pay someone to do simple labor when you can buy some slaves and make that investment back many times over on free labor? I am sure it didn't make the labor market any easier for poorer less skilled whites.

It was mostly good for the wealthy whites.(or whatever the wealthy class was in other slavery practicing cultures/eras)

Fair point.

In theory one could make the argument that slavery adjusted it so unskilled workers were less obligated to do tasks that nobody would want to do, and then such tasks were forced on the slaves.

Again, obviously morally reprehensible, but in theory you might be able to make that argument that it wasn't all bad for the unskilled workers.

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pikachupwnage posted...

It was also a negative for unskilled workers.

Why pay someone to do simple labor when you can buy some slaves and make that investment back many times over on free labor? I am sure it didn't make the labor market any easier for poorer less skilled whites.

It was mostly good for the wealthy whites.(or whatever the wealthy class was in other slavery practicing cultures/eras)

That's a fair point. At least it was easier to just live off the land back then. That's my biggest gripe with capitalism. Some people probably could survive just fine on hunting fishing and farming. But nope cant have that.

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Zeeak4444 posted...

Didnt read topic, the whole argument on the positives of the Transatlantic trade boils down to we dont think we could have done anything without slavery.

I might agree our advancements would have been slown down quite a bit without slavery. But we woulda survived without.

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