What is offensive language?

[jasong]

Originally Posted by science_man_88

nigrum is the root for black if I read correctly and they both come from it.

Slightly off-topic, but don't ever try to discuss the history of the word niggard, a Norwegian(?) word for stingy that Americans adopted many decades ago when the n word was considered acceptable by many. Southerners lose the ability to think rationally when it comes to a lot of racial topics. My friend, who claims "I've got a little bit of black in me from growing up in a black school in high school," thinks it's funny to ask me if I've "smacked around any big black women at KFC." Racism is definitely not gone from the South, but I think most white Southerners think it is.

(Okay, now it's majorly off-topic, sorry)

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by Calvin Culus

It is not a coincidence that tit-for-tat is also an optimal strategy in game theory. Have you read Robert Axelrod's "The Evolution of Cooperation"?

It is provably optimal in some settings, but not all. For example:

The optimality of tit-for-tit is an empirical result for the multi-player and
iterated form of the prisoner's dilemma (and its variations). But these forms
do not have a stable sadle-point solution.

[Brian-E]

Originally Posted by Calvin Culus

It is not a coincidence that tit-for-tat is also an optimal strategy in game theory. Have you read Robert Axelrod's "The Evolution of Cooperation"?

While noting the limitations which Dr. Silverman appends to your assertion about game theory, I would also suggest that game theory is an extremely poor model for human discourse and social interaction because game theory assumes that you want to win at the expense of everyone else. I'm curious: is that your approach to life in general? It certainly isn't mine.

At this point I would also just like to express my huge appreciation for the comments, sometimes in great detail, which many people have made in this thread, also the various interesting articles to which people have referred. I have been reading with great interest and learning quite a lot.

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

While noting the limitations which Dr. Silverman appends to your assertion about game theory, I would also suggest that game theory is an extremely poor model for human discourse and social interaction because game theory assumes that you want to win at the expense of everyone else. I'm curious: is that your approach to life in general? It certainly isn't mine.

At this point I would also just like to express my huge appreciation for the comments, sometimes in great detail, which many people have made in this thread, also the various interesting articles to which people have referred. I have been reading with great interest and learning quite a lot.

From a cultural point of view, the U.S. is actually two countries:
The red states, populated and run by intolerant relatively
uneducated religious nuts and hypocrites, and the blue states.

[CRGreathouse]

We could play a reasonably interesting game of "spot the fallacy" on this thread.

-----

Originally Posted by Brian-E

I would also suggest that game theory is an extremely poor model for human discourse and social interaction because game theory assumes that you want to win at the expense of everyone else. I'm curious: is that your approach to life in general? It certainly isn't mine.

Your view of game theory is much too limited. Cooperative game theory is widely studied and used, and even traditional non-cooperative game theory includes elements of cooperation.

[Brian-E]

Originally Posted by CRGreathouse

We could play a reasonably interesting game of "spot the fallacy" on this thread.

Right. Is what I write below fallacious? Or at least naive?

Your view of game theory is much too limited. Cooperative game theory is widely studied and used, and even traditional non-cooperative game theory includes elements of cooperation.

Thanks for that. Okay, I'll alter what I said before to the following assertion: Game theory assumes that you want to win as much for yourself as possible in the circumstances in which you find yourself. This may require reducing what you win so that other players gain too if the alternative is winning even less for yourself.

I still maintain that that is a poor model for social interaction. I believe that there is a strong element of altruism in the human race (it varies in degree of course from one individual to another). I believe that people's perceived personal benefits of behaving to the exclusive benefit of others are not always measurably beneficial to themselves.

[CRGreathouse]

Originally Posted by Brian-E

Right. Is what I write below fallacious? Or at least naive?

Probably naive, but I drew the separator to make it clear that my 'fallacy' comment was independent of my response to your game theory statement.

Originally Posted by Brian-E

Thanks for that. Okay, I'll alter what I said before to the following assertion: Game theory assumes that you want to win as much for yourself as possible in the circumstances in which you find yourself. This may require reducing what you win so that other players gain too if the alternative is winning even less for yourself.

I still maintain that that is a poor model for social interaction. I believe that there is a strong element of altruism in the human race (it varies in degree of course from one individual to another). I believe that people's perceived personal benefits of behaving to the exclusive benefit of others are not always measurably beneficial to themselves.

There are models (e.g., by Gary Becker) that explicitly include an altruism term for actors. In an extreme case social utilities can be represented as a matrix rather than a vector.

[Zeta-Flux]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

From a cultural point of view, the U.S. is actually two countries:
The red states, populated and run by intolerant relatively
uneducated religious nuts and hypocrites, and the blue states.

For the benefit of those not from the U.S., let me just say that this view of our culture is, to say the least, relatively intolerant, uneducated, hypocritical, and the view of only a small minority. For the most part, we Americans get along with each other even if we disagree with one another and we don't view each other's beliefs in such a bigoted way.

[only_human]

Incredibly obnoxious concepts can be sugarcoated and swallowed like pablum while heartfelt and caring thoughts can provoke extremes of rage if certain words are used. Some concepts themselves have become so charged that discussion itself is reckless. I had a teacher who some got in trouble in the 1990's for describing his experiences as a white man who'd drunk from a "colored" fountain in a park in the 1960's. He was a published poet and careful about how he spoke but apparently the topic itself was too poisonous.

I personally find the Ethnic-American hyphenate naming system currently used somewhat distressing. I don't like drawing distinctions between Americans and don't like the broad-brush usage especially for African-American. The usage assumes that the polite thing is to draw this label, often from observed appearance, and apply it to someone while resting assured that that is how they might like to be categorized. My father was Jewish. If there is some defining appearance that could be applied to this background of Russian Judaism specifically, I am sure I would dislike being categorized as Jewish-American or Russian-American.

And every time we relabel things with more prestigious nomenclature it doesn't change the fundamentally ugly way some people think or treat other people or their things. Because of this, the terms erode and then some new term needs must be applied but since the fundamentals haven't changed, the new terms are yet again a short-term fix. The terms themselves, when examined, are often so condescending or patronizing too. Ebonics is from "Ebony + Phonics." Is that nicer than saying Black English Vernacular? How about the history and culture of Kwanza? Is suddenly recognizing this less patronizing than saying that blacks should get their own holiday? I don't know. Many people draw some comfort from them. That seems to be good enough for many purposes. The sudden surge of how new terms are used for a situation shows that many people don't want to offend, but I find the facile way each next term is seized upon without much examination to be itself offensive.

We are also reduced to coded baby-talk to each other identifying coded words like "the 'X' word" under the observationally true situation that coding these words to fly over the heads of babies avoids offence. Everyone in the conversation knows what word is being talked around. There are no babies present -- or are there?

[rogue]

Originally Posted by only_human

I personally find the Ethnic-American hyphenate naming system currently used somewhat distressing. I don't like drawing distinctions between Americans and don't like the broad-brush usage especially for African-American. The usage assumes that the polite thing is to draw this label, often from observed appearance, and apply it to someone while resting assured that that is how they might like to be categorized.

I had a co-worker with that problem. He was born in Trinidad. He was not an African-American, yet that was the "politically correct" label for him because black or negroid was offensive.

[ewmayer]

My dad was a white European, but happened to be born on banana plantation his parents ran in the 1930s, before the war, while Cameroon was still a German colony. We emigrated to the US in the 70s and he later became a naturalized citizen. Does that make him African-American?