Why is it important to teach children manners?

It is important to teach children how to get rid of manners, how to be purposefully rude, how to be assholes. They will get politeness all by themselves as teenagers, when the pressures for social conformity become enormous, they don't need to be helped along.

But it is unlikely that they will learn how to be rude, how to be resistant to social pressure, and say "no" based on their conscience. This activity is universally hated by society, it is an act that is never rewarded, and this is why it is important to teach children to be assoles whenever they can, as often as they can, so long as they are not hurting anybody by doing so.

In order to be rude, one must pick a taboo, a social thing that is prohibited for no particularly good reason, then violate it. Purposefully. The purpose is to smash through the social order, to produce a disobedience, so that the little local gods quail in terror, so set upon you. They will punish you for your act, so you had better be doing it for something you believe in. But you can do it occasionally for something small, just to practice, and to demonstrate to the gods that you are still free.

For a recent example, on a train yesterday, the conductor announced that "Seats are for sitting, not for putting your legs up" over the loudspeaker. I had been on trains many times on this line, and I have seen many people put their legs up on the seat. I am sure that this is company policy, and the act is also considered rude by many people. But really, the shoes of the folks putting their legs up are not significantly dirtier than their pants, the real purpose is to produce conformity, and to prevent hobos from sleeping on the trains. I had slept on trains many times.

So, since it is a method to isolate non-conforming behavior, and since it really doesn't hurt anyone at all, it really should be resisted. So I put my legs up.

The conductor came to me and asked me to put my legs down, and I first said yes, because I was far from my stop, and I couldn't afford to get kicked out yet. But then when my stop was closer, I said no. She insisted, and I said that it was a pointless exercize in authority, a fascism of sorts. She told me I was being very rude. I agreed, but I said it would be against my religion to put my feet down (thinking "two stops away, I will hopefully not be kicked out now").

She obviously didn't care very much about it, but she thought it was weird, and she wanted the other conductor to come by. He was this large imposing fellow, who came and insisted that I remove my feet from the seat, loudly, with face relatively close to mine. I refused (by now he could not kick me out, it was my stop). He gave some superficially rational arguments for why this is justfied, but I said I would not remove my feet (calmly, one must not lose temper in situations like this). And then he kicked me out at my stop.

I told him "I hope I have not offended you." He said "You did offend me!", so I said "I must purposefully disobey, the obedience is against my religion." He said "You can believe your imaginary stories, but I'll remember you, and if I ever see you on this line again, I will get the police to kick you off the train!" I said, "I accept the consequences of my actions." It was actually a very calm exchange, I was surprised.

The previous time I remember was a month or two ago, when I happened to belch loudly while drinking a soda. I was told that this was disgusting by some ladies my age, obviously, I had transgressed. I calculated that it was not really disgusting, I was not farting, there was no real offense to take. So I started belching more (by swallowing air). This was purposeful rudeness. It is very difficult. The ladies were offended and left, but first gave me a lecture on the fact that I was "emitting gasses" into air they had to breathe. The rationalizations people give for why transgressive behavior is objectively wrong are very funny. They have nothing to do with the true reason, which is simply that there is an invisible god demanding certain behaviors and forbidding others. But you shouldn't worry, it's a little god, it isn't so powerful.

The purpose of such rudeness exercises (one must be very careful when doing them to not hurt people in any way) is to liberate one's own mind, and also that of others, from John Christopher's cap, that allegorical device which is placed on your head at adolescence by the invisible overlords of society. As John Christopher explained in his children's stories, the cap will prevent you from thinking individually, it will prevent you from doing science, and if you wear the cap, you will be unable to do anything unusual and important. I guarantee that if you do such exercizes regularly, you too can end up an unemployable homeless vagabond!

But you will have your independence of thought.

Though your point is valid, I think a more assertive POV would be to teach children how to be polite but at the same time assertive and aggressive when arguing.

Sometimes children confuse "manners" with "losing an argument and going to their room". I think a line must be set that differentiates both cases.

It is difficult to show a person how narrow the path is, and what blinders constrain their actions without first taking off the blinders and looking at the path from a vantage point slightly removed.

Amazing answer, as always. Please read this short column by Bill Bryson: BRYSON'S AMERICA: Rule number one: Follow all the rules. I think you'll like it.

If I had seen it, I would just have posted the link--- fantastic and well-written. Rules-obeying is the origin of most evil.

Well, although I was enthusiastic about this post in the first moment, something has been causing me discomfort every time I remembered it, and I haven't been able to just forget it in the last 24 hours. I like the idea behind it, and specially I love how you give it clear shape and how you explain why one should exercise this kind of assholness regularly. But I don't like the situation you depict on the train. Because you were exercising the assholness against someone *at work*. Someone doing his job is a wrong target for that.

That conductor probably wouldn't have minded that you put your feet on top of a seat if she would have been a passenger. But, since she is at work, she has some instructions and rules to follow, in order to become a salary to feed her children. A bus conductor that tells you to obey a rule, however stupid that rule may be, isn't doing that because (s)he is annoyed by little gods of conventionalism, but rather because (s)he is defending her/his way of feeding her/his family, and I find that messing with that is deeply wrong. You have the right to experiment with your own fate and risk winding up sleeping on the street, as you say sometimes in other posts, but pesting people that is at work seems to me deeply unfair.

Yes, rules imposed to workers are based on conventionalism too, and you can decide to disobey that rules at work and risk getting fired yourself, but you must allow others to decide by themselves what to do about that.

When the worker sees you with your feet on the seat, (s)he is probably thinking "oh, shit, if I let it be without saying anything and my superiors get to know it, I am going to be admonished or even worst, fired. On the other hand, I must be patient and cannot pick this dude by the neck or I can loose my job, oh shit". That is unfair, because you are not risking anything, but you are forcing the worker into a bad situation. For instance, I don't know how these things work in the States, but here in Spain, there is a beginning period in which every worker is subject to test and exposed to be fired with no particular reason, before (s)he gets a more formal contract. People get very nervous when they are in that period, because the slightest thing that goes wrong will probably ruin everything and leave that person again unemployed...

A bell has been ringing in the last 24 hours because I remember once in the supermarket, a cash clerk suddently lost her patience and started shouting at a client. A supervisor came and solved the situation. But from that day on, I never saw that clerk again. Also, I might be slightly "over-sensitized" because I am now looking for a job and I have a doughter that enters the equation in a quite different way as me (until now, I was only risking my own ass, but now it is different). Well, I think I don't need further explanations.

I welcome that assholness and the reasons for exercising it regularly (I sometimes do myself, although I must confess that my ideas were not as clear about the reasons as yours). But there are many more appropriate targets for exercising the assholness that people at work: idiots drinking on the pub (as long as you don't wind up with a couple of teeth less), people in parties and social events, that ladies of your other example, people on the street... There are thousands little moments in everyday life where you can fight that tiny gods of collective stupidity. There are many opportunities to exquisitely pest idiots, that don't involve risking anybody's job...

If it were sufficient to say "I am just following orders" to get out of your obligations, there would have been no Nuremberg trials.

I agree that there is a conflict here, and one must be respectfcul that the little guy doesn't make the rules. But the little guy has to bend the rules and ignore the rules, and this little guy was enforcing the rules with gusto.

I don't buy it, because rudeness doesn't mean honesty, and what you morally want is honest talking and behavoir instead of stupid social rituals. But rude and offensive behavior can lead -and overy often it does- to a social ritual of mobster-like obedience among the terrorized rule-followers left to the factual rule of the assholes, so you exchange stupid rules explicitly enforced by the many, for even stupidier rules tacitly enforced by the few assholes which dominate the group through verbal violence, which nobody challenges because of the fear of being humiliated or attacked.

If you want honesty, you have to teach children to give a fuck about who says what, and instead focus and what is said; avoiding eye contact when talking with someone charismatic, train them to discuss things by written means (the Internet is extremely helpful here) and to equally ridiculize in their heads the one who's talking as long as this person seems to be saying some ambiguous-but-persuasive bullshit, but also to picture in their minds with an aura of respect those who seem to be trying their best to speak sensibly and clearly even if they are wrong (or dressed in rags). The emphasis is on the perception of dishonesty of others: for a child, the bullshit detector is still developing, so they can't fully distinguish yet among things they don't get because they haven't given them enough thought, from things they'll never understand because there's nothing to be understood (bullshit). Dismissing things you don't understand and throwing them in the bullshit mental bin is nothing else than embraced ignorance: this is a teenager's typical rebellious stupidity, and this kind of arrogant attitude with nothing to back it up is what everybody else here is pointing out as a terrible idea to promote.

So you should judge fiercely other people's opinions, but as you can always be wrong about your judgements about the honesty or wrongness of other's arguments (specially for a child), you should be cautious enough to avoid attacking someone without a solid reason and bury yourself into stupid personal arguments as a result. So you can't be rude, you have to follow the rules of reason, and when you are pretty sure that the other is full of shit, then yes, go ahead and publicly ridiculize the argument, not the person.

So no, this is a terrible idea as you promote it, it leads to stupid rebellious arrogant teenager bands with a verbose ignorant asshole as a leader.

I am sorry, but the rude "verbal violence" is essential, because I have seen polite science, and until David Gross or Henry Tye (or sometimes, on rare occasions, even me) stands up and points out the mistake, honestly and rudely, the results are bought uncritically by masses of people, and science goes to pot.

Of course you can be wrong, this is why you should NOT be cautious, because the politicians are not cautious, and will attack even when they know they are wrong. If you attack and are shown to be wrong, good, you learned something.

"publicly ridicule the argument, not the person." Yes, this is true, but it feels the same to the person being attacked. They feel they are attacked politically, not because they are wrong. They usually aren't honest, or else they would have caught the mistake themselves earlier.

The context of this answer of yours isn't academical, you are not talking about adults and politically-driven dishonest behavior among them, but children.

I've grown up going to public schools in Argentina, and I happen to know the result of the lack of any form of self-discipline among children. The teachers had no authority in front of the marginal boys that came from informal, low-class homes, and whose parents were absolutely absent in their moral formation, or accepted by omission every vandalic act of their sons without punishment (they used to beat up a disabled fellow who had had a stroke; they laughed at him because he hobbled when he walked).

These people were absolute barbarians at age 13-15; and I knew that what they liked to do was bad, because even if my family also belonged to the lower-middle class, I was raised with a notion of compassion that they lacked. But you know what? I was morally weak, I wanted to be socially accepted back then, and even if I didn't participate in any vandalic act I rationalized that showing resistance and saying "hey, that's not right, stop doing it or I'll tell miss X" would make no difference, because the adults (like our stupid teachers) were completely powerless against them, they wouldn't listen to any adult, and they wouldn't listen to me either. Of course, they would rather punish me, verbally or physically.

So I wanted to be accepted in this group, I didn't want to be marginalized, made fun of my weight (I was obese) or punched in the face by the pathetic asshole which was the girl's dream. And because of that, because of that hostile environment and my lack of convictions as a child, I didn't take the honest and moral decision when I had to.

These were complete assholes, they didn't respect any form of authority but their own, and they spontaneously developed a tacit political structure which was similar to the mafia. And they were absolutely not honest, and absolutely ignorant; most of them ended up on recreative drugs.

Showing resistance is the type of strength that you gain from doing things against a group. These kids doing violence would listen to you, and stop if you spoke up.

These are not assholes--- they listen to each other and do evil because of their goading. If they were really assholes, they wouldn't do the violence, and tell the violent ones to fuck off.

By the way, I am sorry you had to deal with this. This is not what rebellion looks like. This is what teenager politics looks like, with no rebellion internal to the group.

They wouldn't stop -nobody would listen. You ascended in the social structure by making fun of others, those weaker than you. I remember that they spent a lot of time making up names to each other, looking for anything they could use to embarrass you in front of the group.

The thing is, it was rule by violence, there was no other rule.

I don't know how you could teach a child to disrespect self-discipline, but being impertinent and hostile to anybody, and get a honest individual out.

This is precisely what groups do--- I am saying to not listen to groups--- to go by your conscience. These violent kids are not going by conscience, they are going by their group.

So you need to teach them to be IMPERTINANT and HOSTILE to these group-leaders! They need to MOCK these idiotic violent kids.

So you need to go up to them and make fun of them. You point your finger at Mr. Hot Shot and laugh. That's difficult, and in the exact same way as putting up your feet on a train.

I see your point, it certainly applies to me as a child, and you are right. I remember it in retrospective, and it was hell, I only wanted not to be mocked by them, even if that meant that someone else had to be mocked instead -I kind of feel pity about myself right now.

But I'm still doubtful, because those violent children were almost taught to be rude -they were rude to each other for whatever reason and their parents didn't do a thing to repress it, and when they became teenagers this awful mafia arised. They had almost a cult around making fun of anybody which seemed serious, that's why they laughed at the moral speeches our teachers gave them in primary school.

This mafia operates by groupthink, and the same thing can happen in government, in official offices, anywhere groups of people form. It is dangerous, and it must be fought, and the only way is to wreck the authority of the leaders.

Yes, they laughed at the larger social authority, but they were their own social authority, precisely analogous, except ethically worse.

So, you don't see that teaching everybody to be rude makes rudeness the rewarded skill inside draconian groups of children, making a leader out of the most hostile guy?

I don't see the connection between rudeness and honesty, and intellectual progress. I should have given a fuck and accepted to be marginalized as a young boy, that was the moral thing to do even if it resulted in isolation (I only recognized the value of being alone and left in peace at around 16). But I only recognized the value of reason and fair play as a victim of hostility, not as a promoter of it.

If I receive a direct attack, my first thought would be to bite you back, even if I have to dismiss the rules of fair play and honesty. If you hurt me I'll want to hurt you, becasue there are no rules in a total war.

Only if I know that the mocking is part of the game -that we're following the rules of rational discussion, and we can't be worried about etiquette and stupid social rituals as long as we're playing it- then I can engage on it without breaking the rules, because I'm sure you're following them too. But I can only trust you to be honest if I believe that you gain nothing by destroying me personally. Each of those assumptions becomes unreal in a hostile environment, because I'm suspect about your intentions. Remember, we're children at 8 years old learning to have a serious talk, not adults.

I was completely isolated almost all my life, it wasn't so bad. But yes, you need to buck this unethical order, where the most evil rise to the top. It's not so different in the wider world.

I agree with you regarding the hostility, but you must understand that there are people who are using unethical tools that cannot be fought any other way. When a scientist is dishonest, not honestly wrong, but dishonest, there is nothing to do except mock. You need to say, "this is wrong, it is dishonest" and say it again and again, and this is percieved as rude.

It isn't directed at the person, but at the idea. But it amounts to the same thing as far as moderators of websites are concerned.

It amounts to emphasizing honesty instead of rudeness, I think. The lesson should be, if someone is dishonest, the moral thing to do is to ridiculize him, but only then, because if you are rude all the time you'll upset the environment making honest talk impossible, because of personal suspicions popping up everywhere about stupid unjustified attacks.

This is the correct way to teach a child to think independently and not creating a bully in the process. But I know your writing style, it's more about giving a punch-like example in the face of groupthinkers. I'm OK with that, it's honest even if the content is not absolutely right as a means to your intended purpose of liberating people of social rituals.

Yes, I agree completely, but I think my way of saying it gets the message across more clearly. I don't think anyone in their right mind would think I am advocating some teenage bullies to go around preventing people speaking by yelling at them. But you make a good point.

It's funny how counterproductive this answer is. 25 idiots actually upvoted this answer, of which the majority are just people who blindly follow every single idea of yours.

Of course no sane person would not push the downvote button on this bullshit. Seriously, you called me insincere the other day while your entire life is based on insincerity. You do shit you don't want to just to prove a shitty point. You're more of a tool than a regular person.

First of all, your answer doesn't make any sense.

"this activity is universally hated by society, it is an act that is never rewarded, and this is why it is important to teach children to be assoles (sic) whenever they can, as often as they can, so long as they are not hurting anybody by doing so.

Why the heck would you purposefully do something for which you will never get any type of reward? Also, how can you be an asshole without hurting anybody? The only way this would make sense if you mean hurting as in physically hurting.

Not a single time in this answer have you given a good argument as to why you should purposefully get rid of manners. You only state vague shit as your motivation, such as 'smash through the social order' and 'produce a disobedience'. Why?

You also have this rule where you try to never cite any sources. This is good in physics/mathematics, because it forces you to give answers from first principles, but in these types of answers it's just dumb. How do you know that shoes aren't significantly dirtier than pants? To me, that sounds like bullshit. Please cite a source or give a logical explanation, otherwise it's just mumbo-jumbo.

It does hurt people. First of all, it's dirty. People don't like it. It's not as if it is a rule by some sort of secret society that people are forced to abide by, people genuinely don't like it. No Illuminati involved.

Secondly, your occupying a seat you don't need to occupy. It's uninviting for people wanting to sit, and it makes them uncomfortable. It's not just a meaningless rule.

Your second story is as meaningless. Seriously, who are you to decide that something is disgusting or not? I find it disgusting. A burp usually smells bad, but even if you can not smell it, it brings up the connotation with the bad smell it usually carries, just like farting does. A loud fart may not smell, but people are bothered by it because people know how potentionally unappetizing a fart can be and usually is.

So please, next time, work on giving good arguments, because in your wall of text not one is given. Your last paragraph is plain bullshit. Adhering to certain social rules doesn't necessarily mean that science will be harder for me to learn. At most it could be an exercise in objectivity (as in, judge everything without listening to other people's judgements), but that can be achieved by merely reading this instead of actually actively trying to be a pain in the ass.

The two arguments you give were the conductor's arguments, they are plausible sounding, but nevertheless, they are not a big deal--- they are simply a justification for enforcing a social contract. The same as the idea that you should change your clothes daily, or wear socks. There is a reason for this, but the social convention is larger than the reason. The soles of the shoes are the dirtier parts, these were not touching any part of the seat, my feet were propped up so that the soles were vertical. Further, the train was nearly empty at the time. Earlier, when it was not empty, I did not consider it an arbitrary rule, and I did obey.

A burp does not usually smell bad, especially when drinking soda or swallowing air.

As for your argument that science does not require this type of pain-in-the-ass training, it is contradicted by a hundred years of physicists, half of whom tried to be a pain-in-the-ass (Pauli, Einstein), half of whom didn't (you wouldn't know them). So it would be easier for me to believe that science does not require this if you demonstrated it. Do something completely new. Go ahead. Comment underneath with the new idea.

Now, if you first train yourself to be a pain in the ass for a few years, then read the science, you'll be able to do it.

The 25 votes are a surprise, but the great majority are people who I didn't know of, and who I started following as a result.

It's not the same as those ideas. I've never been called out for wearing no socks, and I've never been called out for wearing the same clothes for successive days... because people don't care, unless it bothers them (which can be the case if you smell like sweat, but that's just personal hygiene).

As for your counter-arguments, I agree with them. The heel of your shoe isn't as dirty as the sole, and depending on the person, it isn't dirty as all. Still, I would be bothered if a construction worker put his heel on my future seat. I agree that the rule isn't perfect (a better one would be that everyone with immaculate shoes is allowed to put his shoes on the seat as long as less than half of all seats are taken), however it's simple and it applies to everyone. A 'better' rule would be prone to many misunderstandings and many people would put their shoes on the seat regardless of the hygienic state of them. We aren't robots, we're humans, and this rule works best.

Regarding the smell of burps, I agree they don't smell bad when swallowing air or drinking water, but with food and sodas they do. I don't know what type of soda you're drinking, it must be a cheap one. Those burps smell.

The only thing I know about Pauli's 'pain-in-the-ass' behaviour is that he was relentless in judging other people's work/ideas ('it's not even wrong') and that he would call out any incorrect idea, no matter whose idea it is. However, I don't consider this being a pain in the ass, I consider this being a sincere person/scientist, and doing this is necessary, as a matter of fact, I'm doing it right now. As for Einstein, I haven't heard of anything particularly bad about his behaviour, other then the apparent neglect of his wife/kids., but I haven't really into that as I don't really care. Do you mean his aversion to wearing socks? As I said before, I don't consider this pain-in-the-ass behaviour, it's not as if he's running around naked putting his cock in everyone's face..he just has one less layer around his feet..

We aren't robots, we are humans, and since the proper rule is ridiculously complicated to formulate, and obvious to everyone, you should just have NO RULE and let people figure it out. If you absolutely have to make a rule, say "no feet on the seats", but then, nobody needs to enforce it, people will enforce it themselves. If someone with authority starts enforcing the stupid rules just for the sake of enforcing them, then my religion tells me to break them, and I'm going to break them on purpose, pissing everybody off (when I'm close enough to where I am going). If nobody does this, the rules-enforcement becomes intolerable, and life becomes a prison.

Einstein was a funny guy. Him and Ehrenfest (I think it was Ehrenfest) went to such-and-so's office or bungalo or something at Princeton, and Einstein decided they should smoked pipe and cigar, because the fellow wasn't there, and he hated tobacco smoke, and they knew he would come back and smell that they were there (the anecdote is from Isaacson, I probably mangled the details). It's more of a practical-joker thing, Einstein was just pre-Pauli, after Pauli, if you want to be a physicist, you had better practice being a straight out boor.

Einstein also wore the same clothes day-in and day-out, and when people asked him, he said he owned "five suits, one for each day of the week, all exactly the same." I would always chuckle, because this is reported in his official biographies, that he owned five suits, one for each day of the week, all exactly the same, as if it were actually true. He obviously just didn't change his clothes (clothes are a total hassle, I don't either).

He also didn't wear socks, and was a nice down-to-earth character.

Pauli was an asshole, and it is really impossible to criticise autoritative work honestly if you don't make a habit of brutal honesty in everything. That's the point of it, and it is why physicists were first in this. But now everyone can do it. It's easy.

We actually did let people figure it out, and the people decided that "no feet on the seats" was the proper rule. Who do you think enforces those rules, aliens from outer space? Don't you think it's odd that the rule is enforced around the world? It's because the people want it to, otherwise more people (other than you) would rebel against it, that's human nature. But people don't.

Now if you actually did something more useful other than terrorizing the elderly with your burps and bothering minimum wage train conductors, I'd commend you. Perhaps protesting against your government's tendency to spy on you? I don't know, but there are enough things to be mad about in the US..

Again, I can't find the asshole in Einstein/Pauli. If Einstein classifies as an asshole because he didn't like to change his outfit and he somethimes pranks his friends, then indeed every physicist (and person) apart from Newton is a true asshole. In Pauli's case, I think it's just being honest, if that makes you an asshole then so am I. You actually burp when told not to, I think that's a notch above what Pauli/Einstein did.

No, the people who enforce it do it because it's easy, it's the path of least resistance. This is why you need obnoxious people like me, to make it hard, to put a barrier between the society and encroaching mini-fascism.

If people are putting their feet on seats, the government would not be able to spy. The guy in the NSA would say "go fuck yourself" to the CIA guy. That's how the pot-smokers got rid of Nixon, by being smelly and noncooperative. COINTELPRO was the reason Nixon was removed, and it was worse spying, it was spying with infiltrators, and sometimes with bullets. They actually killed some black panthers.

The ladies weren't elderly, by the way, they were younger than me. And if I went a notch above Pauli (who was a notch above Einstein), then you have paid me the highest compliment I can ever get.

I'm not 100% sure what you mean by 'encroaching mini-facism'.. I'm guessing you mean that by listening to such (in your view useless) rules, people are getting accustomed to being told what to do/forced to doing what they're told.

Either way, I think in this case that's nonsense, as I've said multiple times. Here's an exercise for you: Visit some of your acquaintances in the coming days. Not close friends, just people who you know enough to be able to visit them. Once you're inside their homes, put your feet on the table. Make sure they're clean enough that they shouldn't worry according to you, but not ridiculously clean (in order to keep the experiment fair). Also, after receiving your beverage, burp loudly (make sure you're not staying at an indian/east-asian household, they might actually appreciate it). I want you to look at the facial expressions of your hosts and honestly tell me whether or not they looked (mildly) upset.

Also, don't see it as a compliment. I am now going to the streets, waiting for someone to say something incorrect, and after that I'll slap them and steal their shoes. I'm now officially a notch above you, who is a notch above Pauli, who is a notch above Einstein. It's not that hard, discovering actual physics on their level is hard. (Also, notice how Einstein > Pauli > You > Me in terms of contributions to physics eventhough in terms of asshole-ness it's the other way around. Hmmm....)

Disclaimer: Eventhough I'm not under the jurisdiction of the United States, I want the NSA and CIA to know that I am not going to steal anyone's shoes, and I'm not going to slap anyone.

I do this kind of stuff on a regular basis, without thinking, because I don't pay attention. I belch and put feet up, or sometimes lie down, sit on things, and so on, because I don't care about the social business, I trained myself to ignore it many years ago, and it's second nature now. People are usually upset and horrified. Good. I like it. It means I am free, and I am helping them be free too, by example.

Yes, not doing this makes you accustomed to doing things that you are told implicitly by the social orders. It makes life miserable for everyone.

I don't slap anybody, or steal their shoes, because this actually does them harm. The things I am talking about do not harm people, they only harm the gods. But people are just as furious when you harm the gods they are a part of as when you harm them personally.

It means that the rule is correct, it means that it has nothing to do with encroaching facism, it means that you are incorrect, because it's not a rule enforced by people higher up just to exert authority over us, but a rule which people want to be enforced.

I have to admit I don't understand what you mean by 'their gods'. It seems to me you just mean their norms and say their 'gods' as to seperate them from the person in order to make your argument stronger ('do not harm people, they only harm the gods')

It is not imposed by "people" higher up, but by entities which are like people, in that they have a self-consistent set of desires, and they are only formed imperfectly, out of collectives of people. These abstract entities are naturally formed by collectives of people, and these are the "gods". If you don't violate these rules on a regular basis, you don't get to know them on a personal first name basis. This is why it is important to do this stuff, it lets you see the gods, and how the react, and get to know them, personally. Sort of.

Remember that these "norms" are embedded, so that if you were living in Nazi Germany, no one would have to tell you to report the Jew living in the basement of the house next door, it would be the most natural thing in the world. This is how evil systems operate, by silent consensus.

That's what I use the internet for. Here I can upset the gods, and they can't catch me. I usually know how they'll react, it's common sense. You do too.

You say you wait until you're close to your stop to actually do what you do. That means that you actually know what happens. Why do you still do it then? Are you expecting a different result? Didn't you hear the quote misattributed to Einstein?

So you know all about it. Why do you pretend ignorance?

I disagree with that quote. Doing the same thing again and again, expecting different results, that's the definition of research. Every once in rare while, something different happens, that's when you write a paper.

Also on the internet, you do the same thing again and again, like argue that positivism isn't nonsense, or many-worlds isn't nonsense, or S-matrix theory, and nothing happens for a long time. Then it clicks with people, and something happens. That's the definition of persistence.

Yes, in this train case, I knew what would happen. With the belching, I didn't. I never considered belching rude, I wasn't brought up with it being rude, it isn't particularly rude in Israel, My wife is Chinese. But she already picked up the American habit of considering it rude, and I did not pick it up, as I shut off that pick-up sensor a long while ago, and only turned it on briefly a few times as an adult, mostly in my 20s, for the sole purpose of meeting women (shame on me, bad, bad, better to be celibate).

I don't pretend ignorance, through this convo I have understood your reasons better, but I still disagree with it. Calling someone an idiot on the internet is not the same as doing it in real life. It bothers people less, however, it has the same reaction (anger). That's why I do it on the internet, because the gods can't catch me.

Do you actually consider celibacy better? I hope your wife is okay with that.. lol. I actually consider celibacy too, but for the purpose of building muscle quicker to intimidate guys like you who burp in my face.

Ha. Funny. Does it work for building muscles? I meant celibacy in my 20s. Sure, it's better than selling out your ethics for sex. That's the bugaboo for dudes, the gods of sex demand fascism. Celibacy does make you concentrate harder on your work, that's for sure.

But yeah, I did this for all my adult life, in real life, just take the blows, they aren't so bad. But I learned the ethos from the early internet, in 1992.

I think it works (see: A research on the relationship b... [J Zhejiang Univ Sci. 2003 Mar-Apr] ) and I've seen some difference (I've made much better gains then my friends in the same period).

The seats at the back of buses in the UK are always the most worn near the front and dirtiest, compared to the rest at the front. Now why do you think that is?

And would you start singing Nazis songs in a Jewish synagogue because it's your "artistic expression"?

Still, it's interesting how humans create arbitrary social structures that harm parts of society, then cry foul when the same thing is don't to theirs.

It just shows the UK is still a home for punks. Good. Better dirty seats than killing people. The Ramones did the Nazi songs business in the 1970s, "Today Your Love, Tommorow the World", which was because Dee-dee was German born and Joey was Jewish, so they really wanted to make a statement about Naziism. It was a breakthrough for institutionalized rudeness, and also the first time that people actually expressed the only reason that Naziism was at all seductive to anyone--- because it allowed dudes to get chicks.

I wouldn't do that, because I don't like Naziism. But I did do the kaffiyah thing in Nahariya, which was considered equivalent.

I'm sorry but I feel this is a very misleading and incorrect answer. Children need to be children and being disrespectful to anyone or anything, including religions, other peoples or the publics property, any kind of authority or their need to rebel for whatever uninformed thought they have in their head, is a terrible idea.

You don't have to say you're sorry to me, but I disagree. This is why I wrote this answer, to encourage disrespect for everything and everyone, a sacrifice, because you will be punished for it, but a necessary sacrifice. There is also a tremendous reward. Only once you take off the cap can you learn mathematics and science properly.