Re: An apt criticism

the media calling someone a 'convicted pedophile' is certainly silly if that is not the name of a crimme.

Exactly.

However, it did give me cause for concern that those pieces were citing police officers and the officers saying what they found. Papers have reputations to consider, and falsifying a police testimony is going damage them. Similarly, if a police officer were to lie to the press about what he found when searching an apartment, it would damage his and his department's reputations.

This only works in theory.

Police statements are by definition not independently verifiable, which makes the third statement impossible to apply, which makes, in the end, impossible to know the truth even if you can verify the chain of information downstream from there.

Notice that this does not mean that all cops lie at all times.

It only means that it is impossible to tell when they are lying and when they're not.

I don't see the problem. Oil companies and defense contractors are pretty powerful too.

The problem is that links to government and law enforcement provide incentives to collude against the public interest.

That has happened with many sectors at different times and places.

I think that happens with The Mental Health Establishment now.

Hubbardites are not alone in pointing that out either. Many people who went through the real-socialist experience has. Foucault repeatedly did too. I think they're right.

However, the problem is, coming here is dangerous for people.

Lurking on SSL is about as safe as internet can get - GC doesn't even have cookies!!

There's a difference between responsibly using your knowledge of language to change that error, and simply throwing what you think is right out there so that people will use it and cause confusion from those who consult professionals for their medical diagnotics.

Nobody on GC has ever claimed that they have medically diagnosed paedophilia on any other poster. Neither has GC ever claimed that its purpose is medical diagnosis, or that its membership is even capable of it.

Anyone who comes to GC for that is, excuse me, too dumb to be allowed to access the internet.

The problem here is that the definitions for pedophilia are very close to each other, in assessing people. It is not an apt comparison to use things like 'distant' or 'cancer' which are obviously metaphors. The different uses of pedophilia are not metaphors.

If I read "cancer" in a medical journal, I know it's a literal medical meaning. If I hear it in a politician's speech about, say, crime, I know it's not a medical meaning.

If I read "paedophilia" in a psychology journal, I know it's a literal APA meaning. If I read it on GC, I know it's not. Why is it so hard for you (and uniquely for you, I must add) to understand that simple and useful concept of:
context???

People feel very strongly about it being there, yet still choose to use it without discussing it every time they do, which is confusing to people who do not have their familiarity with the controversy.

Because 99% of the time the literal APA meaning is not what is meant. Therefore, it would be more misleading to point to it than not to, in the same way that the politician's speech would be more, not less confusing if they then proceeded to quote a medical source.

A person like that would be a homosexual bisexual.

You need to go to more bars.

Together they seem like good tools for discussing intensity and direction.

Which is the point: words group together groups of people who are not identical to each other.

Does it mean a pedophile who is bisexual, or is it some kind of reference to liking both prepubescents and pubescent/postpubescents?

Liking BOTH prepubescents / peripubescents AND post-pubescents up to adults.

Does not really assume a preference for either age set; but does assume a rather wide AOA (I know you don't like the term, but bear with this at least this once, as I am trying to explain it). The distinction of a biped is that their aoa would not just intersect the "hebe" range (as many who don't like prepubescents and many who don't like adults do) but would engulf it outright and cross into the other side.

I do see as problematic that the hebe range is itself loosely defined, but I recognise that "biped" works if you like, for instance, 8-35.

PJ is actually rather good for making their 'pedospeak' page, more work than I've seen people here doing to help define words.

I like that too, actually.

So, if I am correct in understanding that this 'bipedo' term means attraction that is inclusive, attraction inclusiveness does not imply any sort of preference for people on that basis, merely a lack of excluding them.

Yes, it's aimed, among other things, to solve that issue, yep.

What you call a 'pedophilic element' is this something like people who have a psychological response to neoteny?

What I mean as "paedophilic element" is the part of the person's attraction patterns that matches that expected of an [ideal, I am not claiming they exist, ok?] "exclusive paedophile". ie, if you like prepubescent children, your attraction has a "paedophilic element" - as you have argued too, this is well short of describing level of strength or prevalence; so it might coexist in any combination of strength and prevalence with a "heterosexual" or an "homosexual" element.

It would certainly have to correlate with neoteny, but there are ages too - a toddler's body and a tween's are very different, even if both are prepubescent...

I do not appreciate your calling my concern for semantics 'games'. That is insulting. I believe proper language is very important.

Ok, allow me to rephrase.

I think your concern for semantics is excessive.

I think it is excessive because:
- it distracts from the specific issues the statements are trying to deal with
- it ignores the sentence's and post's contexts for no discernable valid reason
- it seems you are the only person who has problems to understand what is meant - suggesting that your concerns are not an issue for most people
- it complicates understanding by adding complexity, not simplicity (in a Hegel vs Nietzsche way)
- it does rarely address the questions that are being asked
- it attempts (might not be your intention, but is a side effect) to reduce all differends to semantic disagreements, when most are not

I think your pursuit of those concerns, even if motivated sincerely, has a tendency to too often actually create language differends that did not exist before, and, paradoxically, to confuse meanings more often than to make them clear.

I also think that you misunderstand many issues, questions or conflicts as being triggered by a lack of proper or shared meaning - that are not.

Finally, I think you are too quick to disregard the historical experience of how a term was first coined and took up meaning(s) if and when you think, aprioristically and unattentive to that experience, that it doesn't fit.

It might not be a game, but your insistence makes it look like one.

Still, I apologise if you felt that as an offense.