if you know

 Cystem_Phailure wrote: Eventually someone always trots out the "we need to protect the children" argument, a mainstay of bookburners and censors for many centuries.

To me this implied that you thought poorly of this argument, at least in part, because it had been used by bookburners and censors for many centuries. Sorry if I misunderstood you.

You do have me curious though about your position on censorship. It seems like you think nothing should ever be censored. What is your position exactly and how do you determine that your position is the right one?

Did he not just ask this before? The universe has lost it's balance! Kurogkrug made a mistake! Oh well, back to my life before I saw this thread...

Yup: http://www.chess.com/forum/view/general/if-you-know?quote_id=4143256&page=63

Are you reading the whole thread?

I honestly didn't start this out to be this much of a personal diatribe, but, since the thread has been somewhat slow for the past day or so I'll finish off this turn on the soapbox and then let someone else up.  As regards my position being "right", it couldn't be, since these are opinions we are discussing, not facts.  But on this particular issue, I don't really think I even have a position so much as an extreme reluctance for censorship, and a strong uneasiness and distrust of the motives of anyone who wants something suppressed.

I would like to think there is a difference between censoring something for 1) safety or security reasons (the classic yelling "fire" in a theater; or publishing state secrets) versus for 2) taste or politeness or morality ("bad" words; blasphemous ideas, etc), which is purely subjective and will vary among individuals, regions, religions, etc.  The former (1) are a necessary evil, the latter (2) I have no tolerance for-- there are too many people trying to legislate thought and behavior.  Of course, there is no line between the two categories, just a blurred transition zone, and a lot of people try to take advantage of that by pretending their attempts at moral censorship are actually matters of social safety.

I touched on my main problem with censorship in another thread yesterday: the instant the decision is made to allow any type or degree of censorship, the argument becomes who gets to decide what gets censored.  And everybody, nutcases and "rational" people alike, including me, thinks their own preferences and hangups are reasonable standards to impose on everyone else.

OK, I see Kuro slipped something in here a couple posts back, but it looks like a rerun . . .

[edit: In that penultimate sentence I didn't mean to have just the "rational" part apply to me-- the "nutcases" portion of the phrase was also supposed to to apply to me.  ]

See, I find this completely absurd. What did I say that children would not already understand, and if they didn't, why would that be bad? Let's take this one at a time.

1. What part of my sentence "It kind of screws up the usage of litotes" do you suppose most children would not understand? My hypothesis is that children are less likely to understand litotes than errors, but you are free to disagree here. This applies to other "obscenities" as well; they almost all refer to fairly banal situations, and also have taboo meanings regarding primarily various substances, acts, or body parts. But they all have "acceptable" synonyms.

2. If you are claiming my usage was somehow sexual, then I still think children should have a greater understanding. Is it better for children to be kept in the dark of the most important process of life?

3. What, fundamentally, is the problem with exposing children to new ideas? We do this all the time, but only with specific, structured, predetermined ideas. Somehow society feels that some ideas are just too dangerous no matter how they are presented. This seems unlikely to say the least.

4. Most importantly, how did my little game of word substitution help anybody? If I say "screw" instead of "fk," how does that solve anything? They are clearly synonyms (in more than one way I might add).

The only reason people think these words are "trash," "profane," etc. is that they have attained a taboo over time. Because they were used primarily by people of a certain class, they were seen as "crude" and "vulgar." Furthermore, because they regarded various taboo acts such as sex (a taboo I think is itself dangerous), they were seen as "obscene," or "lewd" or whatever. This combination seems to make words "profane" whereas either of these in isolation is acceptable.

The only thing I can say on the part of the forum is that most people do not think this way. Most people perpetuate the idea that certain words are inherently offensive and should not be used, and because people think that way, I will respect forum rules to avoid those words out of respect for them. But do not presume that my respect for those people implies respect for their ideas regarding censorship, because I think those are just utterly ridiculous.

I do not know why you are so upset at me.

1) My point included nothing about you. Good grief, I hate being misunderstood.

2) The concepts of vulgarity are bad (duh) which is why children should not be exposed to such things.

I agree with BQ; I have nothing more to add on this post.

I grieve for this topic.

 Why ? who died ?

Anyone who reads this thread will die in the future.

Both above are dead right..."He was right , dead right, as he sped along, now he's just as dead as if he'd been wrong " 

So then, we have discovered a problem. Eh, might as well not read this thread 'cause it doesn't cure death. Not like we can tell anyone through this thread, though. Anyone brave enough to start a topic on it? No? I didn't think so.

RIP 'if you know', we will miss you. 

Right on!  Who will think of the children?!

Eebster: You try too hard to argue an undebatable subject. It's pointless. I'm not changing my mind, and neither are you. I'll fight in chess, not in petty disputes. Maybe I'm just using an excuse, or maybe I'm lazy. But you can teach 3 year-olds about profanity and all of curse words in order to educate them all you want. All I know is that I won't. Thanks for understanding.

I only know a way to solve this :

i cannot find your answer before borgqueen,can you please just repeat it again?.i wait again to your response borgqueen.

There is his answer for you. It's on page 63. Good grief, I feel like a mailman.

EDIT: I know, I know. It's on this page too.

@Eebster

All words have meaning(good, bad or otherwise) because of the perceptions a society has of these words and the context in which they are said or written. As far as using words that are synonymous with 'bad' words, I agree with you to a point. Using a less 'vulgar' word that means the same thing as the word itself is probably a little silly. I think it would be better to choose a different way of expressing yourself altogether. However, while the 'substitute' word may mean the same thing, it is generally perceived as being a milder way of saying it.

Of course these are only my opinions, but I think they are shared by  a lot of people. Here at chess.com, they obviously have some standards regarding language use which I am thankful for.  

@cystem_phailure

I don't want to belabor the point, but I am still curious about your 'extreme reluctance' toward censhorship. It sounds like you think safety or security can be the only good reasons for censorship. I'm just wondering if that is really how you feel. I can think of plenty of things we could put in the local newspaper , school newspaper etc.etc., that would not be a security issue, but would still be clearly out of place as far as most people in our culture are concerned. If you're not too tired of the discussion, let me know what you think.

I think it's important to make the distinction between an organization being forced to censor themselves by an outside authority (as would be the case with newspapers), and an organization choosing to self-censor their content as is the case here.  On the former I'm in 100% agreement with Cystem_Phailure, but on the latter I am not -- in both cases the organization's right to determine what they do and do not publish is ultimately what needs to be preserved.