ZOMBIE FORUMS

You don't really even need the club. Many people are perfectly capable of killing each other with their bare hands.

in terms of zombies, I anticipate something more akin to the begining of "The Dragon Reborn" by Robert Jordan. The main character finds a little girl that was killed in an attack aimed at him, and he uses his awesome OMGWTFBBQ magic super stick of glowy awesomeness to try and resurrect her. He makes her limbs move, makes her heart pump, makes her lungs breath... only there are all these gaping wounds and its kinda gross and she looks like a pathetic marrionette. Just my anticipation.

Yeah, for dramatic purposes and crimes of passion. But, we are tool-using creatures, and for organized campaigns of violence, we tend to use what we are most comfortable with, be it guns, blades, clubs, bows, pointed sticks, thuggee scarves, chainsaws . . .

Fun historical factoid, hardly at all relevant: when the Zulus overran a British camp at Isandhalwana in 1879, they fought with their usual throwing and stabbing spears. The British, armed with rifles, stupidly allowed themselves to be cut off from their ammunition wagons. They fought on with whatever was at hand until they were all killed.

Reminiscing, years later, Zulu veterans remarked on the strange thing some of the redcoats did when their other weapons failed them: they would make fists and attack people just with their hands!

Male humans in virtually every culture can roughhouse and brawl, often to good effect, but specialized unarmed combant techniques are local cultural curiosities.

I remember that - Battle of Isandalwana and the Siege of Roarke's Drift on January 22-23, 1879. I always get reminds of that on the internet when they pull up "What happened on your Birthday in History."

This forum proves that English stereotypes about you Americans are bullshit :) Im glad to have more proof the next time one of my relatives start spouting off about how ignorant and uneducated you all are.

Ah! A trick question. Stereotypes are by definition, false. Not because of their content, but because they are an oversimplified trope describing a population of beings with individual and statistical variety as though they were a uniform body.

Of course, if someone is being that intellectually sloppy, they generally are going to commit other intellectual sins, as well.

But what happens when people strive toward the stereotype? Example: Rolemodles present a stereotype to a certain demographic, glorifying said stereotype, and making said demographic desire to emulate that stereotype to the point of minimizing and burying their individuality for the sake of social conforminity.

While applying stereotype is a sad intellectual blunder, it is even worse when the stereotype turns out to be more true than one would hope.

Bad things, usually. Per my definition above, stereotypes are false tropes and someone who who tries to pattern a behavior after a false trope will end up getting smacked hard by reality. I'd prefer that people were better trained in rational thinking and self-awareness, but, as near as I can tell, even philosophy departments don't put a high priority on critical thinking skills.


"Against stupidity, the Gods themselves contend in vain.''

There is no intellectual model used by humans that cannot be applied to damage, rather than aid, the inidividual or the group. That said, role models, mentors, etc., don't have to be stereotypes, and conformity is vital for cooperative action. In social competition, organization trumps disorganization. Original thinking is vital, but there has to be an organized cultural trope for it to work on.

If you are running an important training organization like, say, West Point, you can graduate a thousand officers a year trying to model themselves on US Grant, Dwight Eisenhower, and Matthew Ridgeway, but only a few have the intellect, insight, and character to achieve that quality of leadership. The rest may imitate only the stereotype, the simplistic version of the role model.

George Patton, for example, is constantly quoted by right-wing political commentators and jingos who only seem to admire his agressiveness, his bragadocio, his temper tantrums, and his swearing. They do not discuss his superb administrative and analytical skills, his studied understanding of history, his poet's sensibility to human emotion (within his field of expertise, war), and the self-discipline and work ethic he applied to his every action.

Stereotypes are not by definition false, they are generalisations of a population. If you try applying a generalisation to a specific instance, then the probability of the generalisation not being accurate increases as the specificity increases. You can go from the specific to the general, but not from the general to the specific. It is when an intellectually lazy person starts to treat a generalisation as being specific to all that population that the stereotype 'fails'.

For example, "Humans are omnivores." Well, if you use this stereotype and apply it to a guy you pick up off the street, you may be wrong as you could have picked up a vegetarian. But this does not invalidate the generalisation as humans are generally omnivores.

Stereotypes are symbolic clusters. They symbolise a particular bundle of characteristics describing a population of beings and aid in cognitive processing and in categorisation. Stereotypes almost always hold some truth and are a useful starting point from which to start building an ever-more accurate picture of the person you are interacting with.

You meet a person for the first time and you start off by categorising that person according to the stereotype that they most fit. eg. This is a Male looks fit must be a jock. Then as you get to know a person better, they are moved into a separate category of their own, and individual characteristics are added onto their category as you get to know them better.

So, stereotypes are not bullshit although it is possible to fail in the application of a stereotype.

The clusters of desirable personal characteristics known as 'Role models' are not the same as stereotypes although they are similar.

Role models are 'people' who exemplify role-types high in social desirability

That definition of stereotype applies to people discussing cognitive processes, and you explain it beautifully, but I was specifically referring to "stereotype" as people use it in everyday conversation. Which is to say, almost invariably in ways harmful to understanding and fair play. A accusses B of using a stereotype, and B gets angry and defends its use. If B were following through on deconstructing the stereotype, as you describe the process, A wouldn't realize B was using the stereotype. The process is almost always internal. When B claims he is not using stereotypes, he might be able to show how he is deconstructing, but most often, in my reading, he instead defends his right to use a stereotype instead of dealing with people as individuals.

Example: B applaudes the stopping of cars carrying black people on the New Jersey Turnpike. A accuses him of "profiling," which, in this case, means assuming that a black person a cop sees on the highway is almost certainly a criminal, or has a criminal past, and is worth the time and effort of a pullover by a state trooper.

I've never heard B try to explain why this could be a cost-effective and constitutionally sound process. Instead, B usually defends the cops' use of the stereotype. That is, they get angry at you for disageeing with the belief that most criminals are black and that cops are therefore justified in treating any black as a high-probability risk of criminal activity. Said action starts with simple harassment--for some college professors, ministers, and businessmen who commute along the turnpike, stops for suspicious action occur several times a month.

The stops are usually followed by threats, bullying, and undignified weapon searches, and sometimes followed by beatings and drug plants.

Meanwhile, of course, the drug runners who haul product along the pike to New York City routinely hire youngish to older white males and females as mules, because they know they aren't checked as often.

Sad but true. I'm a philosophy student right now (not so much to learn what they're teaching, but for an interesting place to bash my own thoughts up against those of other people and see how well each stands up to the test), and I had a very sad moment in the term which just ended, when on our first paper assignment for one of my classes, part of the instructions read "try not to be profound", and explained something to the extent that none of us are likely to come up with anything interesting or original so please don't even bother trying, you'll just make a fool of yourself.

Sometimes I feel like I'm writing book reports more than exercising any sort of logic at all. "X said Y about Z." Sigh... Thankfully, not all my classes are that bad, and even the bad ones start to allow some room for critical evaluation by the end of the course.

Sooo....? Work on closing those wounds and bringing sentience back (if the latter was a problem). Those RJ characters are such pansies (with a few notable exceptions), give up too easy or resort to character-shields when faced with a REAL challenge.

Ummm, not speaking from too much knowledge here. It's a new book/series, right?
Anyway, my point being, I'm sure the D&D ressurection spell would have had a lot of messy predecessors in a realistic D&D setting and it's no cause to give up.

I'm mostly against abortion but I think cloning sounds like a good idea, OF COURSE there will be grotesque monsters! Just find someone poor and pay them well like people used to do to find guinea pigs for vaccines back in the 18-20'th century.

Where did you get your avatar from Vass?

Thanks.


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Hey, sterotypes are valuable characterisations of tendencies. All humans generalise, we only have so much information per person and we see the world through that information. Sterotypes are often condensed condensations of a mass of different individuals forming their particular opinions of another group. They can be benign as well as harmful.

And I'm totally simplifying here because I lack your knowledge.

Okay, nevermind, Boss out of Town already said it sooner and better. And Mestro... dangit.

Oh well, 't least I managed to add the 'looking-glass' allegory of life experience and genetics and soul/personality. mhmmm... reminds me of excellent and faulty roleplaying, is knowledge a perequisite for good roleplaying or is it a mix, perhaps empathy is the primary concern?





!!! Egads.

Y'know, I do the 'good B' thing quite often and I don't know if it's the lack of intelligence among most A people I communicate with, my ADHD and Aspies or if they've become cynical from dealing with the usual B, but I do that a lot and I get slammed a LOT for being 'condemning, etc. etc'. In other words instead of recognizing my attempt to deconstruct they've already put me/stereotyped me into how they normally perceive B.

*sigh* It happened over at the Sinfest forum right after I registered as 'Toteone' yesterday. I was trying to explain how orgies lead to worse health, as well as moral, societal and religious implications and then they (possibly aided by the fact that I got a bit non sequitor) accused me of saying God was punishing the homosexuals with AIDS. ??? (I never even got on it, I just used homosexuals as an example of orgies and non-monogamic relationships leading to worse health (on a general level) when they questioned me on the health issue). I thought it was so obvious to begin with that I was describing groups at large and not individuals that I didn't specify, I tried to tell them what I'd been trying to do later but they just replied that this was right for this person and the other thing was right for this person. It seemed to me like they'd been programmed not to accept sterotypes as valid generalizations of groups and instead focused exclusively on individuals.

Pluss they were very mean about it, I was very civilized though! (I got down to calling Orgies wrong towards the end without adding a personal disclaimer but I was quite upset by then. I modified my statement llater today.)

People are just people, I'm trying to attain some sort of low profile. It's more giving to me to just listen, but then I feel like I'm not pulling my religious-civic duties.

Hummm, thanks for 'letting' me rant. :)


Ooooh, I know what you MIGHT be thinking... that I didn't add disclaimers that I might be wrong 'n stuff in case I was, well I did and I got slammed for them. This guy and maybe others later said I was dishonest. Well, it's not true. Anyway 90% of people are usually honest according to an experiment in 'Freakonomics.'
This is why I prefer ideologies and people who use sterotypes to people who deny sterotypes in a stereotypical fashion, not that I'm overly fond of either.


So yeah, I get beaten up on the net for hauling the truth.

Anyho, Roe v. Wade saved America from urbanized crime. Read Freakonomics?

But of course, black people are statistically just as honest as white people, given the same circumstances (including being a minority or not, religion and other stuff, basically just the pigments, of course).

? mmhmmmmmm

People are crazy. :) :(

Dude, you know, you and old Boss ought to consider getting LiveJournal.Com accounts. It beats the hell out of ad hoc debates in the dark corners of the Internet..

Okiez, :D

Btw., I just checked out Impy's webcomic from a link here on the forums. It rockz! :) (Mhmmm, the soul thing was a bit presumptious, one man's soul is another man's personality.)


Livejournal... aren't those things some sort of blog?

That sounds more like a heuristic. (But then, I guess a stereotype could be considered a specific example of a heuristic...)

I completely agree that sterotypes are almost always untrue. Such rubbish. *adjusts cowboy hat and cleans rifle*

Stalin was The-Man-With-No-Name?
Should have seen that coming.