show me where and when rights granted to religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities is as good or was better in as large an area for as large a time, in any previous time period or location

it never was. not even remotely close

oh yes, there were fleeting utopian fragile experiments in tiny areas, or fragile decrees by enlightened rulers that the status quo thugs quickly erased

but what we have now is a large amount of dominant powers in the world and large areas of the world granting a robust spectrum of rights, and have been doing so for some time now, extending them every year

the rights we grant people today was never extended to so many, over as wide an area, for as great a time. never. not even remotely as close and not even remotely as robust as the rights we have now

not that our rights aren't threatened today. our rights are always threatened and always will be. rights require maintenance. we don't live in a utopia, and we can certainly do better

but we are definitely doing better than any other time period in any other location, by a long shot

learn your history, don't subscribe to ignorant mythologizing

then you don't know your history

this is not a dating site. if you're interested in such things you should be happy to know that gay rights are increasingly accepted. good luck to you and your romantic interests

there have been exotic glimmers of true fairness and equality, always. but they were on the edges of civilization, were fragile and fleeting, and not enshrined rights hard fought for at the centers of power. now they are

progress is not a straight path, it's two steps forwards and one step back. it will always be a fragile growth prone to breakage and backsliding. and then pick up again and resume

and if some horrible world changing event occurs: an asteroid, a plague, then i am sure we will backslide back into barbarism and lose our progress

but as long as civilization is stable, then we are on a new path of rights we have never, ever had in this world anywhere remotely on this scale before. your exotic historic oddities don't remotely compare

yup

the arc of history is clear: progress is real. it wasn't long ago the idea of gay marriage rights or marijuana legalization seemed distant and impossible

bigots, sexists, racists: they may whine and bitch, or go full douchebag and do immoral things, but their fate is clear and certain: the dustbin of history. they are losing, and they will lose in the end

don't get me wrong, sexists, racists and such losers will always exist. it's just that they will no longer dominate the social, legal, and political status quo like they used to. the fact that they no longer do is, like the arrow of time, proof of the march of history and progress

you will always encounter sexists and racists. a moronic comment on slashdot. a throwaway comment by a loser coworker. a catcall or a tweet from who knows where that momentarily catches your eye

ignore them. they hold no power

such shitbags will always linger like a fungus in a dank basement, the socially malformed pathetics of any society. serious civilization has moved on without them, and will continue to make them more and more irrelevant

like cannibalism and slavery, things that also do still exist, and always will exist, in the dark cracks. but are now an exotic shocking fringe, and no longer dominate our societies

You are making the false assumption that the car is not also an automated vehicle. Within the next 10 years, all highway travel is likely to be automated. There is no reason a human needs to be sitting behind the wheel of a car for hours up9n hours in any circumstance.

while i agree with you that this story sounds like bs, i despise this "always dealing with rational actors" argument

people do insane things. all the time. if your argument depends upon how someone you don't know is perfectly sane and rational, your argument sucks

in normal human conversation, errors are expected and normal

if someone is corrected and they flip out because of it, they are not socially well adjusted

if someone catches someone in an error and they flip out because of it, even after a normal, gracious apology, they are not socially well adjusted

congratulations, your behavior in this thread defines a deficiency in your basic social development

welcome to slashdot i guess

Well said.

I wish racists would also understand that their behavior is actually the cause of what they complain about. Therefore the solution is to get rid of the racists. Since we cannot just murder the useless low iq wastes of lives as they deserve, like John Brown would, then I suppose I have to make peace with a very very slow remedial hand holding education for the moronic pieces of shit. So thank you.

more poverty = more crime

more blacks = more poverty, because of racism and history

so when you are a racist, you are simply identifying yourself as the cause of the problem

you are what is wrong with the world

world war ii marked the last time that racist thought had any serious sway in the most developed parts of the world. and the massive orgy of horrors of that war is pretty much the direct result of racist thinking. it burned itself out and proved to the world all that it was really worth

after that, racism still existed, and always will exist, but went into permanent decline. now it simply lurks in the shadows amongst the socially retarded losers and assorted hate filled douchebags. and that's where it will lie, some fungus in the basement

racism is done, don't let it bother you, it will never hold dominance in the developed world again. it's called progress, and progress is real. the only reason we would ever backslide is some sort of serious disruption of civilization. otherwise, all that remains now is the slow but inevitable extension of tolerance to parts of the world still with racist, sectarian, and tribal thinking

the point is that in your life you don't deal with races, you deal with individuals. you don't buy a newspaper from the black race, you buy it from jeff. you don't work in cubicle next to the indian race, you work next to sanjay

but if you wish your interactions with those people to be according to your low iq racism, you get a quality of interaction equivalent to that ignorant guide

if you say {X} because you know sanjay likes the seattle seahawks, you have gained a friend. if you say {Y} because all indian people smell, you work next to a stranger who doesn't know you, and will never know you, because all you show him is ignorance

so you're simply saying you wish to have a degraded dull life, interacting with other people according to crude socially retarded thoughts. your words are simply a slightly more roundabout way of identifying yourself as a socially developmentally disabled moron, with a pathetic life who behaves badly to other people and whom no one really knows

Cite? A credible one, I mean.

an intelligence and social skillset better than yours

we have a black president and he's one of if not the most cerebral president we've ever had, at least since wilson

you evalute the *individual* you stupid ignorant piece of shit

there are violent dumb black people. and intelligent peaceful black people. violent dumb white people. and intelligent peaceful white people

there is absolutely no value, none, in grouping people by skin color, hair color, eye color, or any other random bullshit that the dim minds of mouth breathing racist losers glom onto

you meet someone, you get to know them, you make a judgment of their character

but if you just look at someone, see their skin, and make an evaluation of their *character* based on that, you're a repugnant shitbag whose "thought" processes are low iq and immoral

absolutely no way to south korea or japan. racist, insular societies. foreigners are put in a legal, social, and psychological bubble and stay there. doesn't matter if you've lived there 20 years and know the language like a native. you're different, you stay different, and you don't get to be treated the same, ever