Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Akalabeth Angel on November 05, 2009, 11:50:26 pm
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So when regular users get mad they get monkeyed. When moderators get mad the thread gets locked??
Whatever . . . :rolleyes:
I was in the middle of a reply but I'll send it to E.
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No-one has been monkeyed, the thread was locked for exactly the reasons I stated in it, because it was a heated thread in the first place, and because someone had just posted something that was incredibly inflammatory and didn't really take the contents of the thread into account at all.
Remember, it wasn't even differentiated between who the 'pages of senseless blathering' was coming from, so you stand as much accused of it as anyone else who posted in that thread.
Reasonable argument I can tolerate, even heated argument, but there's a line, and it was crossed.
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It was time for the thread to end. There was pretty broad agreement on that point.
It wasn't doing anything but working people up, and it had basically descended into ideological trolling instead of meaningless debate. Even my last post there wasn't particularly worthy.
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I think we could all stand to cool down from some of the emotion we got ourselves wrapped into in that thread, so here's a little mood-lightener. The Internet apparently has eerily good timing (http://xkcd.com/659/). :D
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Spookily, organ donors are less likely to survive hospital stays if the doctor's aware they're an organ donor.
Statistically verifiable truth.
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...huh.
*thinks twice about that checkbox*
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No-one has been monkeyed, the thread was locked for exactly the reasons I stated in it, because it was a heated thread in the first place, and because someone had just posted something that was incredibly inflammatory and didn't really take the contents of the thread into account at all.
Remember, it wasn't even differentiated between who the 'pages of senseless blathering' was coming from, so you stand as much accused of it as anyone else who posted in that thread.
Reasonable argument I can tolerate, even heated argument, but there's a line, and it was crossed.
Considering that the most heated part of the debate occurred after I left the house I don't take the accusation with much weight.
But whatever, its unfortunate that the apparent crossing of the line by one individual is cause to close a discussion by 8-10 people. And on an unrelated note I'd be curious to know if infractions by moderators are dealt with in the same manner as infractions by non-moderators myself.
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I'm pretty sure all infractions are handled the same way: if somebody complains about it, the moderator does what he or she feels is best. Others can disagree and the complaints are listened to and sometimes the action is undone.
We're all adults around here (except the ones who aren't.)
That thread had been done from just about the time the debate with Trashman wrapped up on forward, honestly.
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It was time for the thread to end. There was pretty broad agreement on that point.
It wasn't doing anything but working people up, and it had basically descended into ideological trolling instead of meaningless debate. Even my last post there wasn't particularly worthy.
It's a pity in a way, because those kind of 'what is Mind?' type debates are often my favourite, but, as you yourself said, those debates must be entered in the full knowledge that there is no right or wrong answer, only observations, rationales and 'gut feelings', anyone wanting the get anything from that kind of discussion other than an idea of other people's viewpoints is pretty much doomed to dissapointment
And on an unrelated note I'd be curious to know if infractions by moderators are dealt with in the same manner as infractions by non-moderators myself.
Just like with the non-moderators, it's taken on a case by case basis, certainly, whilst the debate was heated, there were no infractions of the rules, even by Liberator, but, that doesn't mean the thread didn't need locking, rule-breaking isn't the only reason for doing so. As for the whole 'one person ruining it for 8-10', well, unfortunately, that's what often happens in threads that get locked.
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It's a pity in a way, because those kind of 'what is Mind?' type debates are often my favourite, but, as you yourself said, those debates must be entered in the full knowledge that there is no right or wrong answer, only observations, rationales and 'gut feelings', anyone wanting the get anything from that kind of discussion other than an idea of other people's viewpoints is pretty much doomed to dissapointment
Yeah. We don't even know if the brain is Turing complete yet, and while we have some hard data on how it works (for example, rules as to how we think about the aggregation and segregation of losses and gains, or our problem-solving technique), we're a long way from cracking the whole system.
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Well if anyone wants to continue the discussion via PM feel free. I've already exchange one or two with E guy.
EDIT - Incidentally, having gone back and re-read the thread I don't know why people were saying I needed to read the first 10 pages anyway. Like any discussion on this board, it was derailed on page 2 and pages 2-9 were completely irrelevant to what I was saying but anyhow. That's not an attempt to open up any part or parcel of the discussion here, simply stating an observation and one which I quite frankly suspected from the get go.
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I'm just gonna say this.
I'm not a philosopher, I'm the son of a farmer who happens to like computers and computer games. I'm not highly educated. I'm not even moderately educated by most standards, even in high school I had a difficult time completing assignments on time or in the right way. We're not even going to go into the fact that I've failed every remedial mathematics class I've ever taken since graduating high school.
I said all that to say this:
Don't take it personally if I say something you find to sound uneducated or insensitive. I rarely think about that, I react. That's about all you can do when you are up to your elbows in grain dust and hydraulic fluid, trying to figure out why an electromagnetic clutch won't work.
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Taking all that as read, surely you can then see why you might come off as an arrogant twat when you tell someone who is educated in a subject that they are wrong about it?
If someone came into one of my classes and continually told me I was wrong about something I was right about they'd very quickly get the bum's rush out of my class.
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I reckon so.
But by the same token, don't treat me like a worthless fool and dismiss me, simply for disagreeing with you on matters of opinion. IMHO, and I'm not going to drop any names, there's been far too much of that going on around here lately.
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Well you have to understand that without a basic understanding of the matter at hand, an opinion is worthless. I'm not going to comment on what the government of Tonga should be doing about immigration because I know **** all about the government of Tonga or their immigration problems. I can make some general comments perhaps but if someone who does actually know about the government of Tonga does turn up in a thread I'd be an idiot to tell him I was wrong without a **** load of research.
And if I didn't do that research he'd be well within his rights to say I was an arrogant twat to disagree with him. But if I went further and kept disagreeing with him even after he pointed me in the direction of evidence I was wrong, then I'd be a worthless fool and he'd be absolutely correct to dismiss me as such.
So basically, keep your mouth shut if you know nothing about a subject or ask for knowledge when you don't know. Only an idiot argues about a subject he doesn't actually understand. Especially after that fact has been made clear to him.
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Yeah. The fact is that the entire argument about whether the brain is uploadable comes down to whether or not the brain is Turing-complete. If you don't know about Turing completeness, it's going to be hard to debate.
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Could we have a sticky thread somewhere? It would include links to particularly offending posts, locked threads and reasons for locking/monkeying/list of members currently in monkeyed status/etc. It would give great examples in what to do and what not to do.
Name it "Read this you ****ing idiot" -thread. "If you do stuff like this, this or this [links] the thread will be locked and/or you will be monkeyed."
Ps. I don't particularly enjoy the fact that if three people are having an argument and one attacks the thread, posting dumb **** everywhere, the thread is locked. Why not just monkey the offender or split threads?
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I may well unlock the thread later, but cool-off time was definately needed for everyone involved, despite claims to the opposite, there were several people getting very heated in there, and it was only a matter of time until things started getting personal after the last post.
I'm quite far from a lock-happy mod, but, when it's 3am and I'm tired and people are getting notched higher and higher on the irritation scale, it's best just to lock the door for a while and wait for things to cool off.
Edit: Also, what I tend to do in a thread where I don't consider myself well informed, is to ask, or to quote matters in a way that I'm willing to accept that what I know is second-hand knowledge and is therefore open to challenge :)
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I think it's to be expected that topics occasionally get overheated on a general forum like this. And in my view, that is a strength rather than a weakness, or something that needs to be combated vigorously. At least personally, I'm more interested in hearing what people really think and feel about matters, rather than just see pages after pages of literature references exchanged - there are well better suited forums for that kind of thing anyway.
PS. credit to GB for keeping his act together and civil under that pressure, one of the better performances seen here.
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You got that star because you edited your own posts to remove things that made you look bad, High Max. You'd been warned not to do so more than once.
As for Liberator, hopefully you won't get talked down to due to differences of opinion, but when it comes to ignorance of fact, then, as Flipside said, it's fair game. If you can't cite, then, generally, you aren't right.
PS. credit to GB for keeping his act together and civil under that pressure, one of the better performances seen here.
Thanks. I was about ready to go off on Liberator there at the end, though, which would've been unseemly. It was frustrating to have all that progress ignored.
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High Max : Well, regardless of the name, the group will not allow you to edit or delete your posts, something you had a reputation for.
And Liberator, no-one is telling you not to have an opinion, but when you define other people's opinion as 'Senseless Blathering', then why are you surprised when people react in kind?
Edit: Ok, I'm going to unlock the thread now, since people seem to be, at least, talking to each other, rather than at each other, but I'll be keeping an eye one it.
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Yeah, calling a debate about Turing completeness, physical determinism, and embodied cognition 'senseless blathering' is a wee bit cheeky.
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*_*
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Well, I have no problem with Mobius, so I hope he said nice things about me, and I hope things are going well for him. He didn't make the cut on HLP, but that was mostly a social skills problem on his part, and I look forward to seeing more of his work.
You removed large portions of a post regarding your stalking habits, rendering the rest of the thread nonsensical. Because you had been warned not to do so, you were disciplined.
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Sorry, but what on Earth has Mobius' opinion get to do with anything here?
Seriously, that's like saying 'My mate thinks you're an idiot too, so there!'...
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I doubt Mobius could make heads or tails of the thread, so his reaction was probably not positive.
It's one of the risks of running a forum that tends to be so mature (compared to other Internet venues): it's easy to feel shut out. Mobius had some growing up to do, but he wasn't a bad guy. At some point I'm sure he'll mellow out a bit.
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I don't have a problem with Mobius himself, he's quite welcome to come back and get involved if/when he feels ready, but I take exceptions to posts saying 'Me and my mate were talking about you and we both think everyone we disagree with are idiots', that's not doing either High Max or Mobius any favours, because it makes them sound like they are about 8 years old, and since Mobius isn't around to give his own voice, it's basically putting words into Mobius' mouth that he can't confirm, support, clarify or deny, and neither can we.
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Right.
I would be very surprised if Mobius were actually acting as juvenile as High Max suggests. He's usually a bigger man than that.
I make a point of saying good things about him. There's no sense in talking **** about people behind their backs; it gets nothing done.
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What topic is this referring to again :wtf:
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If he is not prepared to post his views then that is up to him, that does not mean that the responsiblity falls to you, either he posts or he doesn't, what I don't expect to see is him using you as some kind of mouthpiece, or you invoking him as some kind of defence. Neither are acceptable, if he has something to say he can come here and say it personally and not use you for the purpose, that's hardly the act of someone you are defining as mature, is it?
And, once again, whilst the conversation was heated, there were comments flying in both directions, and yet both sides managed to moderately civil at the end of the day, at least until Liberator dropped his little bomb on the thread.
All you are succeeding in doing here is lowering my opinion of Mobius, and that's unfortunate, because he isn't here to defend himself.
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I keep records of IM convos, but I won't say exactly what we were talking about because I like him. But he isn't happy with being banned from the Wiki before or having his stuff removed from it or whatever happened to him 'something like that'. I agree with him that I shouldn't care what people here think about me. All I can say is I'm not alone with my dislike on how people call people they disagree with and can't understand 'retard, idiot, etc' on the forum, and they claim to know people like me by saying 'least enigmatic person I know' and that sounds like a silly way to say it since I never met anyone here. Also, things like how they put down, Lib, Trashman, me, Mobius, Akalebeth Angel, etc, for disagreeing with things.
Disagreement is fine. You not being able or willing to adequately support your statements with facts is not. You can go on and on all day about "Science isn't everything" and "rational thought isn't all that", but ultimately, you are just very, very wrong and utterly misguided on these points. And since you are unwilling to do the same thing WE do with every one of your statements, that is, CHECK them against what we call FACTS, is it really a wonder if we don't really take you seriously?
Then Bat goes on saying things to many like "you have a lot to learn about evolution' and 'ever take calculous?', etc' like he is smarter than all else who don't argee with him, and has a braincentric attitude and ego. Then people say I sound childish when many here are no different and have egos too and are in some ways more immature by having to always use vulgar words and things like F'er and 'retard'. That doesn't make you look good to any that do that. It least I don't call people retard and ignorant or dick head. That is more childish, I would think, and sounds high school. It reminds me of what I experienced many years ago in high school.
That paragraph, right there? There may be a point in there, but your patterns of speech do a good job at obfuscating it. Besides, we don't always use vulgarity, but it is ****ing hilarious from time to time.
Anyways, it doesn't matter. I should follow the advice of people who are on my side and not worry about what people here think of me or being outnumbered.
There's a difference between not taking things that go down here personally, and ignoring everything that is being said. Sometimes, we do like to help, to give you pointers on where we think you could improve yourself and your behaviour, but it just doesn't seem to take.
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like he is smarter than all else who don't argee with him, and has a braincentric attitude and ego.
and has a braincentric attitude and ego.
braincentric
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I think the problem here is that some people work in black and white, whilst others work in shades of grey. I wouldn't even say that an opposing opinion is 'wrong' as such, but merely a different view on the subject, but, there's a difference between arguing the point and simply throwing accusations at people.
To be honest, my problem isn't with the differing concepts about the Teleportation thread, but more about the whole idea that something Mobius says has any bearing whatsoever on it, or that someone is willing to turn round and say 'I was talking to Mobius about GB on IRC, and he thought you were idiots but I'm not going to tell you exactly what he said', I hope I don't have to point out how ridiculous that sounds.
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It doesn't bother me. I trust that Mobius is more mature than not. I would be deeply disappointed in him if he'd actually done that, but not much else.
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As I noted to Mobius about a similar gambit, I don't care if you say you're not alone; all information from you about such things is automatically suspect. Without emperical evidence of Mobius himself posting such things, I do not believe it in fact happened. Because, frankly, you could be lying when pressed on the issue. You would not be the first, and you will not be the last.
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Okay, look.
Nobody really cares.
If Mobius is being a dick, then, um, that's why he was banned.
If he's not (which I assume, I thought he was a pretty good guy), then that's good.
I honestly hadn't given a spare thought to Mobius since he vanished, except to wonder if INFASA was going to be done soon. So let's just let it be.
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