But the post doesn’t say that we “unlearn everything in our life” - it says we lose our memory.

Acquired behaviors (note that I won’t refer to them as “learned”, because the distinction made between “learning” and “acquiring” is a useful one for many reasons - I’d be happy to go further in depth here if you’re interested!) are stored in different parts of the brain than what we commonly refer to as “memory”.

If you’re hung up on the definition of memory, we need look no further than the fact that a common synonym for amnesia is “losing one’s memory”. If you want to use a definition of “memory” that goes beyond what people usually mean when they say it, that’s fine, but then our comments here seem to boil down to a disagreement over definitions, rather than a disagreement over empirical facts.

Thanks, good point. I’ve edited my comment.

Walking and talking are both instinctive, acquired behaviors, not learned knowledge. This is why you can’t teach a child their first language or how to walk - they have to reach the developmental stage where this process will happen automatically, and teaching has little-to-no effect whatsoever on the acquisition process.

This is also why amnesiacs are always able to walk and talk (unless they’ve also specifically undergone damage to Broca’s or Wernicke’s area, or the motor cortex).

Also, even if humans somehow did “forget” how to talk, language is a human instinct, communication would resume almost immediately, and within a single generation new, fully-featured language would have developed. We can see this with Nicaraguan sign language, for example.

Also also, it would be very difficult to completely drive humanity into extinction. Even if that generation “forgot” how to walk and talk somehow (whatever that might mean), it’s basically guaranteed that plenty of humans would survive across the surface of the earth to continue the species nonetheless.

I learned women actually don’t have the same access to higher education as men.

You’re right - women have significantly better access to higher education than men, and have demonstrably better education outcomes as a result.

For example, women are significantly more likely to receive scholarships and grants than men in undergrad.

Partially as a result of this lack of access, men have dropped to almost 40% of undergrad students, while women make up nearly 60%. Women also receive more doctorates than men, and almost twice as many Master’s degrees as men.

I’m not trying to minimize the bigotry that you observed (or faced), but it’s objectively false to claim that women have worse access to higher education than men.

I can’t tell if this is cope or Kool-Aid.

Excellent point, very logical and persuasive. I’m sure this will be the comment that finally changes my mind!

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Working at McDonald’s isn’t bad at all - it’s just that people who are more difficult to work with often end up working in fast food by necessity. My comment implies that the OOP works in fast food due to a lack of professionalism and a tendency to make rude comments to customers, as evidenced by the post.

“Minimum wage workers should be intentionally rude to people who are probably fellow wage workers instead of finding actually productive ways to push back against their exploitative employers” is certainly a take.

I appreciate your honesty and straightforwardness (here and in your other reply to the user below - sorry, I confused you with another user), but compared to the levels of vitriol being thrown at me in this thread for having the audacity to not just assume that a woman is a horrible bigot deserving of a bafflingly rude customer service interaction simply for asking for a “boy toy” for her son, I’d say I’m doing pretty well here, all things considered.

I’m just not sure how I’m the obnoxious one in this scenario, instead of all of the inflammatory commenters and the really obvious fishing attempts for bigotry that are keeping this sub-thread going?

Am I the obnoxious one just because I’m the one choosing not to go along with the ridiculous circle-jerk, even though my comments are an order of magnitude less antagonistic than the ones I’m responding to? I legitimately don’t know.

You’re the other user is right, though - my mind’s not going to change, and the handful of upvotes I’m getting lets me know that others feel the same way, even if they’re understandably hesitant to speak up about it with all the personal attacks I’m getting here as a result.

Once again, the 196 circlejerk and the real world are very different places.

Them and everyone else, from the sound of it.

Nope, I was a normal minimum wage employee who worked the counter while I was putting myself through college. I also didn’t intentionally antagonize customers who just wanted a happy meal toy for their kid, though, so that may be where the confusion is coming from.

Did… did you not read the enormous thread of replies to this comment where I explained exactly that, multiple times?

Assert whatever you like, random person on the internet.

This comment is an excellent example of an interesting, sill-unsolved question in the Philosophy of Language community: “is it possible to ‘know’ something that’s factually incorrect?”

Researchers seem to be split on the issue, so depending on which researcher you talk to, you could be right!

Pragmatics literally always comes into play. Humans cannot communicate without pragmatics, because semantics without context doesn’t actually exist in the real world.

You know literally nothing about my worldview other than “intentionally being difficult to an innocent customer who probably has no idea why they’re being antagonized is usually bad”.

Once more for the kids in the back: “Believe it or not, many of the people you interact with each day aren’t actually bigots. They’re just, y’know, reasonable people, which I know must make everyday life very difficult for you.”

Pragmatics doesn’t seem to be your strong suit either.

Also, I literally have worked in fast food, so…

Edit in response to your edit: “Believe it or not, many of the people you interact with each day aren’t actually bigots. They’re just, y’know, reasonable people, which I know must make everyday life very difficult for you.”

And yet the OP exists, whether it’s a creative writing exercise or not, in which a girl toy and boy toy have clearly been offered to the woman. Regardless of whether the hypothetical restaurant in question is actually a McDonalds, the employee in question would certainly have been disciplined for their actions in the OP if their needlessly antagonistic behavior had made it back to a manager, and that disciplinary action would have been completely warranted.

Believe it or not, many of the people you interact with each day aren’t actually bigots. They’re just, y’know, reasonable people, which I know must make everyday life very difficult for you.

In the context of a fast food chain offering a Hot Wheels car and a Barbie doll as possible toys, her choice was a perfectly clear choice.