I'm always willing to help people see their own flaws.

this is just a headache... i want to get behind a good protest. i really would. oy...

about a third of this stuff i can get behind. such as corporations having the same rights as people, and... well, that might actually be it.
the rest of the things in that list are either only half of a picture, ignoring governments role in said things, or complete nonsense.

A protest is fuelled by emotions, in this case the kafkaesque situation people are put in by a financial/economic sector out of control. And they are out of control.

When companies reach a certain size and the influence and power that comes with it, there is a point where the will of every individual in that company to do good is overruled by the pressure of economical rules that we created. At this point that company begins to take on a will of it's own.
I'm not speaking metaphorically here. Ask any top-ranking manager of a big corporation. Most of them are good men and yet their companies do the most atrocious things to the people and our environment. None of which any individual in that company ever wanted to, including the manager. But they are all replaceable. Such are the rules we created.
And each of them will get replaced if he tries to contradict the will of the company to amass more money, more power, more political influence. And so we live in fear of losing our job and become the tools of a will that is bigger than us and more powerful than each of us, making us do things that we know are hurting us and our friends. We are played out against each other.

It's a very complex situation and it's not easy to put it in words that still carry the emotional impact necessary for a protest, without falling into a subjective viewpoint. But maybe a subjective viewpoint is valid here that we all share: The human viewpoint vs. the corporate will.

Don't throw out the entire thing because you disagree with some of it. Then nothing will ever get done about the parts you do agree with.

If we could just get half of congress to understand this concept, we'd be in business.

You're guilty of it too.

Also.

Sorry, don't know how to play this video :(
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-eTi5-qNgA

I finally understand why you're still here.

it just so happens i know a little something about being expendable and being asked to do things that go against my morality. i used to work for sams club (read: Wal-mart on roids). you CANNOT excuse the individual in this sort of thing. i have been in the position where my supervisor, and then general store manager have asked me to out an out lie about what we charged for a service. i told them no, i was not going to knowingly lie to a customer. i ended up quitting a few months after this.
corporations can only do these terrible things as long as individuals within them are willing to go along with it. and yes, this might mean losing your job.

also JM, after re-reading there was really only one thing i agreed with the way they are presenting it. so i mean... and there is a lot that i actually disagree with.

Was that woman screaming "were human beings?

I still don't know why you are.

Why is everyone so mean here? You guys put eachother down like a snobby high school cheerleading group.

Why do you require them to be nice?

Hay! The only person i attack (aka being mean to) is Alan, and he knows that deep down i have an unparalleled infatuation with his forehead so its ok. Otherwise its purely defensive. I dont even ever talk to Mcfarlane! He just constantly tries to jump on the "lest make fun of someone so i can keep up my badass persona" bandwagon all the time. But in particular he has a problem with almost anything that i post. I just want him to like me, so i make fun of him back. Does that make sense?

Id say my nemesis would still be rob tho. Or mb. Or Antony. Or baconfish. Or Seraph. Or cloud.

Ok, maybe I am a dick, BUT THEY ALL STARTED IT!

Like how as the list goes on the people become more and more irrelevant?

Do you really think that MacFarlane is trying to cultivate a 'badass persona' on these forums? Is that what it seems like?

yes

What, that wasn't clear?

Take me, Mac. Take me hard.

The only thing MacFarlane is cutivating is my loins.

and it's harvest time

You bet your ass.

I bet my ass once. ****ing Steelers.

That which is asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. You of all people have no excuse for reasoning this poorly and unscientifically.

The only thing that you have provided any evidence for is the trivial fact that authority can be and has been abused. You certainly haven't demonstrated that authority has been abused to the level that you assert. You make a number of extremely broad assertions about the nature of the personnel in the US police force, and it's implications, (ie, that a bribe could easily effect a coup or significant change in policy) which are not supported at all.

Yes, there are many documented cases of police corruption and illegal activity, but no real world system is ideal, so this is to be expected. Information about individual cases of brutality are scientifically meaningless if we want to draw any conclusion about the overall level of effectiveness of the police or their overall dedication to objectively upholding the law. This is a biased selection BY DEFINITION.

Furthermore, we know that maintaining a police force is both necessary and extremely challenging due to the aforementioned physiological problems with authority and the fact that a large number of persons must by employed for this purpose at a reasonable cost. Significant data would have to be acquired before we could say how well our nation had succeed at this task or even establish a baseline for success relative to our nation's level of prosperity. We know that many nations have done far worse at this task, corporation being particularly problematic in South America, Africa, India and China, due to a lack of bureaucratic infrastructure. [1]

You have the educational background to know that what you have been posting is not reasoning that can support itself. Doing what you have done is destructive both to analysis of the subject at hand as well as to the promotion of scientific thinking. You do not have the excuse of ignorance. Shame on you.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corruption_Perceptions_Index

You're essentially witnessing "Lord of the Flies" on the internet.

In which Jon'C makes a giant generalization and assumes all humans act exactly alike.

This made me smile because it's kind of true.

Didn't those kids get the runs from eating too much fruit? Oh man, no! I hate having the runs!

I do a damn good job of avoiding anything remotely political, but here are my comments/observations on this thread:

1) With a title of 'Occupy Wall Street' how did you guys make it 4 pages without a mb FAT joke? (Unless I missed it). And now that I had to mention it, I feel really childish.

2) I've always hated Micheal Moore and his sensationalist journalism, I'm glad to see a few others feel the same way. Every time he approaches a controversial topic it seems completely transparent to me that his motives are all monetary and ego stroking. Generally I don't have problems with people who strive for money and fame but using events like Columbine and 911 to do it disgusts me.

didnt think it was possible, but i'm more disgusted by the videos of police in NY than the riots in england this summer. Your "riots" merely comprise of peaceful protesters standing against corruption and manipulation of capitalism, and get pepper sprayed for just standing there.

Unbelievable!

if(getThingFlags(source) & 0x8){
  do her}
elseif(getThingFlags(source) & 0x4){
  do other babe}
else{
  do a dude}

Welcome to the police state.

Police here wouldn't get away with that. In fact, police are complaining they can't do anything because they can (and will) get sued for anything, even firing in the air and causing a panic.

Which is a good thing, in my opinion.

I cited the Stanford Prison Experiment, which (along with the Milgram experiment) illustrates that our behaviors are informed more strongly by context than by personal judgement or ethics. If your conclusions about the study are so insignificant, you are not as well-informed as you think you are.

I've cited the well-recognized and documented institutional failure of the New Orleans police following Hurricane Katrina. I've also cited an (extreme) historical example of law enforcement corruption toppling a government. This is only inadequate if you believe your country is exceptional.

You have failed to mention any of these "physiological" problems with authority. Do you mean psychological?

Someone who cites the Corruption Perceptions Index has no business questioning the scientific reasoning of anybody else.

You cannot use rates of police corruption in other countries as a benchmark because they do not have the same beliefs we do. You cannot use our standards of police corruption in other countries, because they do not have the same beliefs we do. You absolutely, positively, cannot use third-party judgements of corruptions, because those people do not have the same beliefs as the culture they are judging. If you want to conduct a scientific study of this subject, you need approach it from a perspective of description rather than prescription. This means accepting the fact that it's good when the Chinese massacre protesters, and bad when the Americans arrest some. This means abandoning the concept of moral absolutism. If you aren't doing this, you aren't being scientific... you're just name-dropping science. You really don't understand how the social sciences work.

You also don't understand how moral judgements work. I do not rationalize my values with science. Nobody with a clue does it. Know why? Because that's the road that leads to genocide and eugenics, and other similar efficient, sound engineering and good scientific decisions. The reason I am outraged is because I find police corruption and incompetence abhorrent, and if it happens once it is happening too often. This is the only standard against which I am prepared to measure the effectiveness of our police w.r.t. civil liberties, and by my standard we are failing. If you don't like it, you can **** off.

You just told him to abandon moral absolutism, and then claimed a morally absolute position.

You just told me that you didn't read my post.

I think that ideas such as those within "The Moral Landscape" are going to change how we feel about moral absolutism.

If these people had it their way, there wouldn't be any capitalism.

No I didn't, I told you that there is a contradiction in your argument. You should deal with it, because I really want you to be right about the police.

No. There would be capitalism. Their protest is not against capitalism; it's against corporatism.

Yes, you did. I said that you need to accept moral relativism if you are going to approach a subject like this scientifically. I also said that you shouldn't approach a subject like this scientifically. Where's the contradiction?

What exactly is "corporatism" and how is it distinct from capitalism?


Also:
700 arrested after protest on NY's Brooklyn Bridge




and this is telling:

What the **** am I reading

A love note??? ...it puts the lotion on it's skin.