But minimum_wage's (and everyone else's according to the votes) refusal to acknowledge that these things are linked to very specific and obvious economic benefits is baffling to me.

I don't think they're refusing to acknowledge that there are economic benefits helping the city. What they're doing is pointing out who those benefits are helping (newcomers from elsewhere), and who they're hurting (people who've grown up here and possibly have to leave).

You're right, and they're right, because neither set of points runs at cross purposes.

I agree that punching someone for wearing Glass is totally appropriate

As is putting people who choose to do this behind bars where they belong.

...and no, I do not have a Glass. I just think the minute one takes a violent approach because of something they don't like, then one is infinitely worse than whoever it is doing what they don't like.

I was with your first post, but there's no way it can be said that Austin "has handled the transition smoothly". They've done worse than handle it badly, in fact: they haven't handled it at all, choosing instead to just keep on keeping on and ignore the drastic population change entirely, letting the chips fall where they may.

One example out of many: they are just beginning to expand MoPac -- this has needed doing since it became over capacity 10, 15 years ago -- and they're doing it in a way that will price even more old Austinites out of the city.

I can see this, and I'm of the class that would probably be considered a gentrifying force, even though -- like most good Austin hipsters -- I was here before that really became a thing. ;-)

Yawp. I've commented just a few times, but visit daily. Hi.

"I'm not trying to be an asshole but, what is the difference?"

Intent and execution.

"eating a steak is gaining pleasure from the cow's pain, and death."

And pleasure is, by no means, the only thing gained from eating a steak -- in fact, it isn't even the important thing. Whereas this can't be said for direct animal abuse, where "pleasure" is the whole point.

There are a lot of differences here, now that I think about it.

It has certainly been a pleasure to meet you, fr33lunch.

...not that I'm going anywhere that isn't bed, but. I did want to get that out there.

In Linux, I use Banshee.

As it is built from .Net, I have every reason to believe it works in windows, though in that environment i'm locked into iTunes (iPod classic 160G).

What really scares me is that I have a son.

He will never know violence by my hand. And certainly not that of his mother's.

I wonder if this means he will never know the value of truth, and grow up a liar.

Fucks me up erry day.

The one or two you do connect with might just be worth the eighty or so you don't.

You... can play that??

I'm in awe.

I would be OK hearing that history. I really would.

Mine is equally personal, and it is a subject I am clearly passionate about.

My mother was mentally ill, and would routinely beat my brother and me for crimes such as "touching the floor" and "not washing your hands for the requisite ten minutes after you took off your shoes."

No bones broken; no blood drawn. But also, not simple whippings. "Beating" is the accurate term. Tools were often involved, and when mom got tired, Dad would grudgingly step in, because matrimonial and parental solidarity.

Lying became a way of life to escape violence. It sucked, every time.

Sucked worse when I was caught or could not sufficiently prove that I did not do what I was accused of. That would make the beatings worse. I would be called a "habitual liar" at high volume, and more often than not, the charge was true.

(Funny story, but I was genuinely more afraid when mom said that, because the word "bitch" was in there, and if she was cussing, she must be really pissed off. I was, like, six. I wouldn't learn the definition of the word "habitual" -- and that it wasn't actually a variation of "bitch" -- for some years yet.)

But if there's a silver lining here, its that I became attenuated to the damage lying does.

It is difficult to maintain a web of lies, and it almost always falls apart completely with a single sweep of the arm.

Everyone a person lies to -- everyone -- suffers from it. If not immediately, than eventually.

Lies poison everything they touch, and hurt just about everyone they affect. Sometimes this even includes the recipient of a surprise party, though I've only seen that once.

Lying is the antithesis of trust and respect.

And to bastardize a quote from a certain Mr. Raymond, the truth seems to have a mind of its own, and it always wants to be known. Lies are simply a matter of time; a delay tactic.

...anyway, once I left home, I decided to just tell the truth all the time. One quickly learns to take care regarding phrasing and delivery, for sure, but there's a line there in my life, and it is inscribed deeply. So deeply, that I have, in time, come to consider "sins of omission" or "lies of silence" as equivalent to purposeful and outright falsehood. I figure as long as you aren't getting beaten for it, you'll come out ahead. And I admit: It's a gamble. It may make you lose some "friends," but I've found that the ones that go? Years later, it often becomes clear that they are not people you would have wanted to keep in the first place. The ones that stay, respect the hell out of you so much that it is almost absurd. When viewed from this perspective, truth-telling is very much a win-win situation: I have the kind of friends, and the intensity of friendship, that other people wish for. I've no doubt that they are fewer in number, but I'm more grateful for them by an order of magnitude, and the amount of "failures" this attitude has caused in nearly 40 years of life amount to exactly two.

And those two... over time, have not proven to be shining bastions of humanity and ethical behavior.

A person who is a friend of lies and lying has almost always proven to be a negative force in my life, and the lives of many others. Is this in my own myopic, biased, personal (and uneducated, if the word of some is to be taken as fact) experience -- given, of course, a freedom from the threat of violence as a motivator? Sure. Of course it is. But I think, perhaps erroneously, that this counts for something.

Lying is no longer something I will even consider as a viable option myself, a very few exceptions notwithstanding. And yes, I do almost reflexively consider opposing viewpoints as morally bankrupt, a fact I cannot really, at this stage, help.

Perhaps this makes me a poor conversationalist on the topic. In fact, it may be likely.

But I just don't have it in me to be apologetic about that.

Edit: seriously, fuck lies.

I don't disagree, but with a caveat that amounts to two single letters:

People tend to do what is basically good for their collective group. At best, other groups are useful. A lot of the time, other groups don't matter. At worst, they are dangerous threats that must be defended against or even attacked preemptively.

Societies exist because of enlightened self interest like that. This is not a condemnation -- I view it as a given, and morally neutral... the "instinct" you refer to. In my understanding of things, it is actually this -- far more, and far more often -- than fundamental good will that has carried us this far, for this long.

And yes, I'll admit: I think "morally neutral" is where most people tend to fall in the spectrum.

Who is @theadvancedapes, does he talk about stuff like this often?

You disregard that and instead decide that I "do not enjoy feeling guilty" and further, I lack the self-awareness to make this choice on a "conscious, purposeful level."

It's like you have five interpretations of everything I say, and are just determined to pick the one that is the most insulting to you, and then frame it as what I actually said. Why do you enjoy doing this so much?

From an emotional standpoint, however, my mother-in-law either loses or wins.

That depends on when you choose to end the story.

If you end it in the moments after you tell her how much her sweaters suck, then sure. However:

You don't think it is possible that immediate pain would give way to eventual (but far greater) pleasure, when she no longer is a bad knitter, or has, instead, found something she really is good at? You don't think it's possible that she may eventually, at some point down the road, come to thank you for setting her straight, and bond with you more securely due to your honesty?

If not, then... well, that's interesting, I guess.

You are, again, wrong.

Yes yes, I know how much you enjoy saying that. Good on you, here's some more internet points. Gotta admit, though, I am surprised you are so ready after such a relatively short cool-down period.

I find that people with inadequate debate skills tend to skirt the central argument when they've lost. Rather than graciously bow out and acknowledge their defeat, they will willfully disregard the central point of discussion and hammer at the margins in hopes that a thousand skirmishes will somehow outweigh a unitary defeat.

You've just described what I think about your last two replies.

And "Pot, Kettle wants a word" is not an ad hominem, its pointing out that your posited argument is guilty of that which you accused mine of.

I suppose I could have written just that, but I thought you'd understand as much.

the angry flailings of someone who knows he's lost.

You do realize you're the only one in this conversation who is attempting to "win" anything, right? And therefore, the only one who has any real fear of "losing"?

I'm just trying to have a conversation. Or, I was.

If you're trying to fight -- and I suspect you are -- you should have just let me know that, so I could go ahead, "lose", and go do something constructive and fun... like actually have an adult conversation with someone who isn't convinced that "conversation" is only about getting a good one in at every possible turn.

---

reads the rest of your post

---

...and yup, it does indeed seem to be the case. You provide an intellectually dishonest -- and that's being generous -- recap of what has occurred, followed with continued assertions that you're using "science" when you have yet to privide any sort of scientific link between "here for a long time" and "morally good cores of human beings". (Still waiting on that, by the way). Heck, you have yet to even realize that whether or not we're here due to our fundamentally "good" natures isn't even a discussion that can adequately be addressed by science...

... and all the while -- this is the funny part! -- you go ahead, accuse ME of being emotionally driven, accuse yourself of being all intellectual all day, while out of the other side of your mouth you flagrantly admit that this is a concept you're so emotionally in bed with that "there will be blood" if anyone treats it "flippantly".

Finally, you close with a string of eloquently phrased -- but still base, rude, unnecessary and utterly uncalled-for -- insults about my character, the character of my friends, and how much smaller you think my intellect is in comparison to yours.

"I know you are but what am I?", though cheap, is the most succinct way to phrase my reaction to every single complaint you've levied at me. I feel dirty even putting it out there, because of how immature it sounds, but the hypocrisy on display from your side of the discussion is unbelievably conspicuous. There's really nothing other to say; you're projecting so hard that people reading your last salvo must think they're at a drive-in movie.

And let us NOT forget, all this -- ALL THIS -- so that you can justify to yourself that it's really OK to be a liar. This is what you do with your self-admitted vast intellect: turn some internet stranger who was disagreeing with you into a whipping post to make yourself feel bigger and better about being a person of willingly dishonest character.

And you WONDER why I disagree about the fundamental "good" nature of humanity. That would be the funniest part if it weren't so goddamn sad.

---

But hey, whatever. You win, tiger. Have your internet points. I am soundly "defeated". There.

...was it as good for you as I suspect? ...did you get what you needed? ...do you need a tissue now, or perhaps a cigarette?

You threw a whole lot of punches here, but one day, I suspect you'll realize you were shadowboxing, and that maybe I'm not the one you're so desperately trying to convince.

That's what I'm hoping, anyway.

Another way to view this:

You do not enjoy feeling guilty, and because you believe the truth would hurt your mother in law's feelings, you've decided that avoiding this pain is worth more than giving her that truth -- even though that truth might actually, in the long run, cause her to improve her knitting skills.

I'm not saying that the above is true, and if it is, I'd bet dollars to doughnuts that you wouldn't be doing it on a conscious, purposeful level. But it is, certainly, a way to see it.

I suspect both stories are true to some degree.

Because you're attacking a maxim: "There has been a continuous line of human civilization for twelve thousand years now, which is a pretty convincing argument that our better natures win out most of the time… which in turn makes the argument that most people are basically good."

And I'm "attacking" it...

...actually, no, I'm not. I'm disagreeing with it, and refuse to let you paint it otherwise.

...and I'm disagreeing with it because it is not a convincing argument about our better natures. In fact, it isn't even AN argument to that end at all, as you don't even attempt to support the connection between "being here a real long time" and "because of our morally good cores".

For that matter, you take it as a given that our continued existence is, in itself, "good" in some kind of objective way, and that's something else you don't support.

Immorality (such as violence, thievery, selfishness-at-the-expense-of-others, etc.) has as much to do with our continued presence as a race as "our good sides shining through". Depending on how you view history, it is even arguable -- convincingly so -- that our "bad" traits have more to do with us still being here than otherwise (though I don't entirely buy that, either).

"You're essentially saying "it takes society to make society therefore society = bad."

I think that's a very poor interpretation, and I'm trying to keep in check the feeling that it was done purposefully.

I am actually "essentially" saying the same thing I've been saying all along: that I disagree with the idea that people are "basically good", because it is unsupported by the weight of the evidence you've presented, and because there is evidence that seems to indicate exactly otherwise. Such as in situations where people act differently when their wants and needs are not met and they no longer fear the societal counterweight of physical punishment for a "bad" act.

I don't see how you can paint that as a nonsensical tautology, but... shrug.

Anecdotal evidence with an n of 1 does not a trend make. It's not food for thought, it's irrelevant to the discussion for every reason listed above.

"You can't prove that!"

"The guy admitted as much."

"Well now its irrelevant!"

...really?

You're elevating your hand-wavey gut feelings to the logical equivalent of scholarly evidence

earlier

There has been a continuous line of human civilization for twelve thousand years now, which is a pretty convincing argument that our better natures win out most of the time

Pot, Kettle wants a word.

That doesn't fly with anybody. Ever.

Then you understand the source of my disagreement. We agree on something, at least.

don't bring a knife to a gunfight. I can tangle on this one.

Why does this have to be a fight at all? o.O

Where society has, ipso facto, broken down.

Who was talking about society?

But while we're on the topic, if it takes a social construct to keep people in line, and they "go bad" when that construct (enforced via implied threat of violence, no less) fails... doesn't that strike you as argument against people being "basically good"?

(Note, I do not claim that people are "basically bad," nor will I.)

A bald assertion with no supporting evidence

The supporting evidence was a quote from one of the survivors admitting exactly as much to a reporter.

I chose to believe him, but it just occurred to me (given this thread) that he may have been lying. I don't think so, but its food for thought.

Platitudes are not argument. Don't waste my time.

You seem unnecessarily grumpy today. Is that part of being "basically good" too? Something else I just "don't understand"? ;-)

EDIT: Or are you genuinely annoyed that someone doesn't buy into the idea that people, on the whole, are "basically good"? If so... I sincerely apologize for that. I didn't mean to ruffle your feathers.

To me, there is no acceptable form of lying.

I make an exception for surprise parties. I do so only grudgingly.

So while I'm not 100% black and white on it, I'm with you 99% of the way. People rationalize it away because lying makes their lives easier, and they are willing to pay for that using honor and respect as currency. Bleh.

if most people are basically good

The problem is, that "if" is pretty big. In fact, I'm not sure I buy it, or the "well, we're here, so we must be doing something right" reasoning behind it. Survival and morality differ. The two end up on opposing teams far more often than otherwise, and examples of this are plentiful. This is especially noticeable in the event of a disaster, like, say, the Philippines, circa right now... where formerly good, upstanding people are resorting to stealing and violence just to get by. The people who are surviving the best over there are the ones most willing and/or able (via desperation) to commit immoral acts.

I don't disagree that most of the time, people mean well (or, at least, don't willingly intend any harm) when they lie, but there's an old saying in a box behind me... something about the road to hell and good intentions.

I... I've never not washed any of my clothes. So... I can't answer this.

Oh I am SO glad you said it. Jeans are the most uncomfortable things ever. The appeal is completely lost on me.

I'm a New Orleans native.

You're not wrong, but... at least there, there is a lot more to it. There, it's like you start with sugar and fat, but have to do a whole hell of a lot more to it before it passes muster. Usually, that "whole hell of a lot more" takes hours to days of careful and considerate shenanigans.

Then again, I perhaps undersell how it is here. The sauce is surely just sugar and fat (and a bit of pepper), but the meat prep is insane. That's the twist: the sauce was invented for low-grade, not-keeping-well meat, but is now applied to intricately prepared and marinated top-shelf stuff.

It's a strange paradigm that I've yet to get used to even after almost a decade.

Donnie Darko. Anything by Stanley Kubrick. (Not a sosumi, but: I never understood the hatred Avatar got.)

The Beatles. Oh, I like 'em well enough, but I'm talking about Beatles as Pinnacle of Modern Music. Just... no. They aren't even close.

Everything Lana Del Rey.

Arcade Fire.

Bar-B-Que. It's a'ight; I don't hate eating it. But where I live, people have made some kind of fucking religion out of it, and I can't help but wonder how a sauce invented to mask the taste of rotting meat is now, somehow, considered to be culinary genius.

Call of Duty/Battlefield X/Modern warfare simulators. For that matter: sports games. (I never did understand why people who like football that much don't just go outside and play it). Heck, while we're on this track: sports themselves. This includes the olympics. I just do not understand, and have not been convinced, that training for years and running really, really fast is a worthwhile accomplishment worthy of heaping piles of praise on someone. And the violent, us-vs-them warrior culture that the NFL promotes is just hideous and, I believe, the source of a lot of other long-standing problems we deal with all the time.

Parks and Recreation.

Everybody Loves Raymond.

... I think I'll stop here, I have somewhere to be.

Doing pretty danged good, and that makes me... cautiously optimistic. :-)

Ah, I see. I was confused, and I apologize: I did think cases A and B were the same case, that's my mistake.

Case Z would be what I've been talking about (more like railing against).

That said, I see now why A and B are interesting to you.

If B is as you present it, then I disagree with the groupthink there, as in every other criminal avenue we view inebriated people as responsible for the horrible acts they commit under the influence. In fact, we often ratchet the severity up if one does something horrible in an altered state, and criminalize otherwise legal acts if they attempt to be done drunk (like driving). That should be the case in B, and that it isn't displays a double-standard regarding responsibility and inebriation that I can only describe as "breathtaking".

On the other hand, I find it is common to have less sympathy for inebriated people who hurt themselves or otherwise get themselves into bad situations then would normally be felt if those people were sober. I often view this as reasonable, and share the sentiment, so I can't say that I disagree with A at all. I disagree that it is somehow sexist to point out that she had a hand in her own undoing, or to suggest that the situation may well not have come to pass were she sober.

On your last sentence, I think we've actually come to some sort of agreement, as my entire gripe against zero-sum responsibility is that it reduces things to a numbers game whereas percentages of responsibility don't make any real (or even mathematical) sense otherwise. I mean yeah, you can try to do it, but if you did you'd very realistically have situations wherein the sum total of all blame to go 'round could very well be something like 487%, and that's just a silly and useless way of looking at it.

Firstly: an honest "thank you" to you, for actually having a discussion instead of a flame fest. There is actual thought here, and an interest in engaging in a hard discussion in a level-headed way, and I'm so appreciative for that, that I'd put you on my Christmas list if I knew who you were.

Sincerely, I thank you.

On to the matter at hand.

"To issue in short is that responsibility isn't the only thing up for grabs; there's a lot of other factors considered by the other quotes that are pretty straight forward and mostly that's culpability."

Of interest, to me, is the fact that when one Google's the definition of "culpability", the very first word of the very first definition of the very first result is "responsibility". Don't take my word for it: https://www.google.com/search?q=culpability&oq=culpabili...

I bring this up because you mentioned semantic land-mines, and I argue that this is one such thing. Responsibility, culpability, blame: really, we're dancing around synonyms at this point, and it plays into the hands of my zero-sum thing almost too conveniently.

To continue (into the foray of how I believe you are seeing the game as zero-sum -- if we can actually comfortably define this as a "game" behind the shielded apathy of our clickey typing aids): you ask where the link is, and then, in the next sentence, show me the link directly:

"Case A: A woman drinking, she is more responsible for the rape. Case B: A man drinking, he is less responsible for the rape. /n/n Where's the link?"

The link is right there, in the words "more" and "less". In a non-zero-sum game, neither party gets to BE "more" or "less" responsible, because that implies a static relationship: that the MORE responsible one is, the LESS responsible another is! That implies, if not outright states, the shifting of blame as I described it in case 1 above, instead of unlimited parties sharing an inexhaustible pool of responsibility (or culpability, or blame, or whatever word is sufficient).

Were it truly a conversation in a non-zero-sum system, it would be completely rephrased, because it would HAVE to be. Because in a non-zero-sum game, it simply does not make logical, mathematical sense to use words like "more" and "less". It would be something like "this man is completely responsible for the crime, yet it cannot also be said that the victim did not have a hand in her own undoing".

AND vs. OR.

The difference might seem subtle, and an issue of hair-splitting... at least, on the surface. But really, it changes the entire thing. It permeates even into your final conjecture: "In case A person A is 100% responsible and person B 0% responsible, but in case B you could see it as they are both 50% responsible for the act or they are both 100% responsible for the act as either of them acting would have been sufficient for the event?"

Well, that depends mightily on a number of things, but what's worrying is that according to your example, there still seems to be a finite amount of responsibility/culpability/blame to go around. At worst, there is 100% blame that each person could have -- 200% total. At best, there is only 100% shared among each participant. Either way, there is a set amount, and it is exactly this that I protest against as a false understanding of the premise. To my mind, person A -- the "pusher" in each case -- would likely be assigned 100%. Person B? Unless he actively exerted some effort to put an end to the catastrophe, they would carry SOME blame, even and especially if he did nothing. Could have stopped it, but didn't? Yeah, there is culpability there. Helped a little? More culpability.

But at the risk of turning this into a novella: I see what tree you're sniffing at the base of, and would like to bark up it for a hot minute.

It's about empathy.

Responsibility is one thing, but empathy is the added factor in the discussion. I say "added" because it adds to the conversation a much-needed dimension that is often ignored. If one commits a crime that others can empathize with -- especially if the others are jury members or a judge -- the severity of the crime gets reduced and/or the sentence gets lightened. Note, that in this case, the crime still exists as such, and no one questions whether or not the perp is responsible for committing it; its just that if you can get a jury or judge to empathize with the reasons it was committed, the results of the trial -- and the severity of the sentence -- change.

"Stealing bread to feed your family because you seemed to have no other choice" is the most facile example I can think of. Is stealing wrong? Yes. Is the person who stole a criminal? Yes. No one doubts either thing. Yet, given the circumstances, I doubt you'd find a judge or jury who'd really bring down the full force and backing of the law to punish such a thing.

AND vs. OR.

Guilty? Yes. Criminal act? Yes. AND, were there reasons some of us could relate to?

If the answer is "yes," things go down differently.

Does this facile and woefully inadequate analogy apply? To rape??

I think the answer is -- truly -- "sometimes".

Can she hold her liquor to the point where she's about to fall down but doesn't slur her words? Does she, under those conditions, flirt and make out with people she normally wouldn't (were she of sober mind and body)? Was she, during that night, wearing unusually revealing clothing and hitting on people she would not were she sober? Did her "no" -- if she was even capable of uttering one, at that point -- come off as a demure come-on, after which she almost enthusiastically went along with the act?

And him: was he drunk and horny enough to not see what might be exceptionally subtle cues of protest, followed by compliance that would be perceived as "willing" by even sober men?

These paragraphs are, by no means, intended to paint every -- or even a majority -- of rapes in a way that would suggest that most, if not all, rapes are really just rebranded regret. Instead, they are intended to outline the complexity -- the color version, as opposed to black-and-white version -- of the entire situation, in a way that is more true to how things might have gone down; and how I know a vast amount of these things go down, and how an overwhelming amount of such situations are eventually perceived and understood by both the participants and the people attempting to decide the fate of all involved.

It's a sticky situation, even before you bring into play the obvious hypocrisy involved regarding drunk people in the USA -- that being, how everyone is conditioned to assume that drunkards are utterly and ultimately responsible for every horrible act they perpetrate, even upon themselves, UNLESS we're talking about rape and consent, at which point everything that ever happens is someone else's bad.

The TL;DR is, I guess, that this topic is so much more complicated than a zero-sum view of responsibility can present that I am held breathless and in awe -- in an unmistakably negative way -- at the number of people who view it that way.

It simply does not do. Which is why I find myself, a bleeding-heart liberal and proud progressive, with a wife who is a former sex worker and sex educator, at odds with the principles of the current social justice movements in place by the unanimously younger crowd I interface with these days.

I... that's a confusing question, because if you DID accept the premise of responsibility not being a zero-sum game, I'm not sure how you'd see anything about the other three points that required address. Those data points only work to provide the conclusion you've come to -- "criminal culpability being lessened" -- in a Responsibility-As-Zero-Sum system; otherwise, they do not equate to that understanding of what transpired.

However, I'm going to attempt to guess what you want addressed, though, and at least try to say something worthwhile about it. Here goes:

As I do not see responsibility as a zero-sum game, then I do not see any of the examples you posted as instances where the perpetrator automatically and inevitably becomes less responsible for the situation as the victim becomes more. Rather, I think the examples you posted show systems in which each person involved in the crime had their own individual levels of responsibility determined separately, with the rulings and consequences following from that understanding making sense in that context.

In more detail:

- Under your understanding of responsibility, there is a set amount of blame -- 100% -- and it can only shift from one person to another. Assuming only two people (rapist and victim) are involved, then if we say that the victim is at least 10% responsible for the occurrence of the event due to poor choices like inebriation and such, then the rapist's percentage of responsibility automatically gets reduced to only 90%... even if the victim were completely unconscious and the rapist drop-dead sober. Your understanding of blame is black-and-white thinking; an "or" clause: EITHER the rapist is 100% guilty and the victim perfectly innocent no matter what she might have done up to that point, OR the victim is partly to blame and the perpetrator is at least partially innocent. This line of thinking is often taken by newer-wave feminists and social justice warriors, and in the context of principle actually serves well, despite being pragmatically broken.

- Under my understanding of responsibility - the non-zero variety - there is not a set amount of blame, and every participant -- even bystanders and society itself -- can have a varying degree of it. Further, those combined degrees do not have to equal 100% (in total OR per-participant). Under this paradigm, the perpetrator could be determined to be 100% responsible for the rape -- undoubtably, definitely at fault, no questions asked -- AND the victim could be determined to have %20 of a hand in her own demise (again, given previously discussed factors). AND the people who watched or knew what was happening and could have stopped it but didn't have some degree of responsibility, AND some societal structures such as sports culture and/or the collegiate greek system could have a few percentage points... and, and and. This type of thinking, I think, serves to paint a more faithful, in-color picture of reality, social structure, and rape... and I find is often taken up by judges, well-selected juries, pragmatists, and people who view the issue as a criminal one, despite being broken and even considered insulting in the context of principle and social justice.

I think the outcomes of the points you raised make far more sense, and are even logical and understandable on a human level, when viewed through the lens of a non-zero-sum system of responsibility. Of COURSE there is a difference in opinion and action taken when something like blinding inebriation is involved; I just disagree that it means what you think it does.

Is that what you wanted me to address, or did I miss what you wanted entirely?

Your arguments are only able to hold water if we operate under the unproven (and, IMO, mistaken) premise that responsibility is a zero-sum game.