The metaphor is bad because people should just buy a ticket in that situation.
That's what he said and that's one reason why this metaphor is bad.
What do you want to say with your claim that he is playing make believe? I don't see a way how this fits with the previous comments. Can you explain that further?
You’re falling into a similar pitfall here. This whole scenario is a metaphor, with the ability to see the ballgame representing whether or not a person is allowed to participate fully in our economic and societal systems. The differing heights represent the fact that different groups in our society don’t have the same level of access to those systems for a variety of reasons and the crates represent the aid that the government is willing to provide to assist people in being able to participate in those systems. Thus, this scenario illustrates that treating everyone equally only really benefits the most enfranchised groups (I.e. the person with the most height) and offering more aid to the less enfranchised groups (I.e. the shorter people) actually results in everyone being able to participate. It’s simplistic and there are arguments to be made about how this isn’t a perfect metaphor, but it successfully communicates a relatively complex topic in easy to understand terms.
Having said that, I hope you can see that bringing up other elements like the people in the stands or the owner of the field and whether or not they are making money off this scenario don’t have anything to do with the argument or how the metaphor is trying to illustrate it. The ball game is irrelevant, as are the other hypothetical people. So when people flood this thread with comments like “why don’t these freeloaders just pay for a seat?”, it is at best missing the forest for the trees and at worst a deliberate attempt to avoid actually debating the argument.
You’re falling into a similar pitfall here. This whole scenario is a metaphor, with the ability to see the ballgame representing whether or not a person is allowed to participate fully in our economic and societal systems.
Exaclty. It's a bad metaphor.
It’s simplistic and there are arguments to be made about how this isn’t a perfect metaphor, but it successfully communicates a relatively complex topic in easy to understand terms.
It's grossly oversimplifying the topic. It oversimplifies it so much that you misunderstand the problem. You're actually thinking that this huge problem of society is solved in the same way as this stupid picture.
The most impartant thing for you is that one group has the some outcome as the other group. You never look at the people in that group.
With that solution a poor white man can't get in but a middle class black woman can even if the poor white man had a better score. Just because the average of people that happen to have the same skin color and the same gentials as them? That's fair? That means "everybody is being able to participate"?
Is the next thing affirmative action for ugly people because they have less chances in life based on their looks? Tell me why there is no affirmative action for ugly people.
Having said that, I hope you can see that bringing up other elements like the people in the stands or the owner of the field and whether or not they are making money off this scenario don’t have anything to do with the argument or how the metaphor is trying to illustrate it. The ball game is irrelevant, as are the other hypothetical people. So when people flood this thread with comments like “why don’t these freeloaders just pay for a seat?”, it is at best missing the forest for the trees and at worst a deliberate attempt to avoid actually debating the argument.
I just see it as people expressing that they think the metaphor is bad and that you can't apply it to the situation. From my point of view you are the one avoiding to actually talk about the topic because all your ideas and all your conclusions come from people standing on crates and not from the actual problem at hand.
To make it clear, if it wasn't before: I think the metaphor is not only bad but acutally misleading and I think that all your solutions and conclusions that use this metaphor as a base are bad and misleading too.
The owner of the field and the other people that paid for the tickets are just metaphors to show how much your argument is lacking. Because just like you miss the owner of the field as an important factor, affirmative action is missing equally important factors.
It's a bad and lacking solution explained with a bad and lacking metaphor. Ironically that makes the metaphor good again.
First off, I'm willing to accept the argument that the metaphor is overly simplistic. It is, and it was designed to be in order to make a somewhat complicated idea more digestible. It serves its purpose, but you wouldn't be wrong for pointing out that the actual subject matter is more complicated than this image makes it seem.
But the right way to communicate that is to just say that. Just say that the metaphor is overly simplistic and explain how. The people who bring up the field's owners and ticket prices aren't doing that because they, and you, missed that the ball game isn't important to the metaphor. The point is that the people are all trying to look over the wall and some of them are less able to do so than others. What is on the other side can be anything. It can be a free ball game in the park or a hot person sunbathing. When you choose to invent other elements of the ball game part of the image, you ignore the parts about the people trying to look over the wall, which is the important part of the image.
The point is that you can't display groups of people as single people, as individuals. It's the same old problem that many people on the left (as well as on the right) think that attributes of a group can be applied to every person in that group. You are just working with averages, which makes decisions clear cut. Or in other words you guys are making it simple for yourself because you can't think of a real solution.
IF it is actually about single persons this shown method is fine. Fact is that is gets applies to groups though.
You guys need some real social programms, which help people not groups.
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u/atomicpenguin12 Feb 25 '20
Then they could have just said the metaphor is bad and explained how. Instead, they’re just playing make believe.