[Akalabeth Angel]

So when regular users get mad they get monkeyed. When moderators get mad the thread gets locked??

Whatever . . .   

I was in the middle of a reply but I'll send it to E.

[Flipside]

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.

[General Battuta]

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.

[Mongoose]

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.

[General Battuta]

Spookily, organ donors are less likely to survive hospital stays if the doctor's aware they're an organ donor.

Statistically verifiable truth.

[Mongoose]

...huh.

*thinks twice about that checkbox*

[Akalabeth Angel]

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.

[General Battuta]

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.

[Flipside]

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.

[General Battuta]

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.

[Akalabeth Angel]

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.

[Liberator]

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.

[karajorma]

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.

[Liberator]

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.

[karajorma]

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.

[General Battuta]

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.

[Janos]

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?

[Flipside]

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

[High Max]

.

[castor]

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.