And now I will put on my moderator hat and say this.
Craig, I and others have grown weary of receiving lengthy complaints in response to any post that objects to something you write. In the post I just responded to, all you did was complain about my prior message, rather than address the actual underlying issue.
You accused me of misquoting you and attacking you personally, neither of which is true. You claim I "made up" a term that you actually made up, and I only made reference to. You complained that you "did not ask for a yes or no opinion without any support", even though you quoted my response which did include support. And the cherry on top was claiming that my objecting to your argument by saying it was absurd was a "name calling attack".
All of this over a phrase, "takers who support torture" that you used, not me. Which you could have simply responded to by saying "sorry, I meant ___" rather than a lengthy diatribe trying to make your comment my fault.
Your behavior in this forum is consistently dismissive and belligerent. You routinely go after other people but bristle at even the slightest objection to anything you write. The result is that threads become hostile environments where people do not want to contribute.
If you think someone has posted inappropriately, then use the "Report post" feature. If you think *I* am posting inappropriately, then I encourage you to address your complaints to the admins in "Moderator Discussions". The 500-word protestations over alleged misquotes and supposed personal attacks do not belong in threads and will not be tolerated further.
First, I'm going to clarify the issue of "made-up" quote. That's the one thing that is an error on my part. Here's how it happened:
On first read of Charles' post, I assumed he had quoted me correctly, and wrote a reply on that basis. The large majority of my post is made up of that first reply.
Then, I happened to re-read my post looking for the term he quoted me as using, and nothing close to it was there. I concluded that he had 'made up' the term as his version of what I said and put it in a double quote misquoting me, and added a point strongly objecting to that at the top - the new 'first' section briefly objecting - and added a line at the bottom of the post referencing the 'made up' term.
After a bit more editing, I realized that it was in my later, quick 'reminder' post asking if anyone wanted to answert the question in the previous post, that I had used a term similar to the one Charles quoted. I then concluded that he had not meant to misrepresent what I'd said, and the only issue was the technical one that double quotes should be exact, acurate quotes.
I went back and edited my post to remove the strong criticism, and leave only the technical objection, implying no bad intent by Charles. I scanned my post to try to make sure I'd caught and removed anything based on the incorrect understanding and thought I had caught it all. I missed the phrase 'made up', which I'd meant to remove if I saw it. That was my mistake and I withdraw that now, for what it's worth.
Having said that, I stand by the technical objection. There is no reason to double quote any inaccurate quote, even it's just switching the order of words.
Charles defends it; I disagree. His defense is to link something called 'scare quotes', which do not apply.
As his own link explains, scare quotes - which it says should not be used in more 'impartial' discussion - are meant for situations where the writer is trying to be ironic, to distance himself from the phrase in the quotes; it gives an example of referring to "normal" people as a way of arguing that something said to make people abnormal is unjustified. In every case, it was not quoting an actual person - it was quoting a generic third party position the writer was disagreeing with.
Charles' use of the double quotes was a direct quote of me, and was not 'scare quotes'. It was simply incorrect. I supplied him with the solution - use single quotes - but instead of accepting it, he made this spurious defense. A bit ironic when he's arguing against excessive defending. I'm not saying the issue is terribly important, and not saying Charles had any bad intent - but the correct use of double quotes is one I think worth mentioning.
He says there was a 'lengthy diatribe trying to make this his fault'; here is my entire point:
First, if you claim to quote me, with double quotes, do so accurately. This was not accurate - though it was not a substantive misrepresentation. Single quotes would have been fine.
I don't think that's a "diatribe", I don't think it's trying to exaggerate 'fault', specicially using part of its 'length' to say "it was not a substantive misrepresentation" - an odd phrase to include for the purpose of diatribe and pointing out fault, when it does the opposite - and the rest of the 'length' used up by the suggested solution.
Basically, the criticism consisting of 11 words.
I have to wonder if Charles is responding to the original version I quickly edited, which he can still read.
You said 'all I did' was to criticize your post, and that I did not "address the underlying issue". In fact, the bulk of my post begins with the third line of the post I thought was 'addressing the underlying issue', where I began:
Second, to address the broader point about what I posted:
About this: "Your behavior in this forum is consistently dismissive and belligerent. You routinely go after other people but bristle at even the slightest objection to anything you write. The result is that threads become hostile environments where people do not want to contribute."
At the risk of being dismissive and belligerent, I disagree. And I'd say the claim is ironic.
It's factually false. There are any number of posts objecting to something I write where my response is nothing but appropriate, respectful, even caring; I especially will compliment anyone who helps me recognize a mistake. I genuinely appreciate it (perhaps in stark contrast to your reaction of my gently pointing out the technical problem with double quotes above, suggesting single quotes instead).
As usual, you supply no evidence for the claim, (not meant to be beliigerent, just a relevant criticism about how that makes it harder to respond), but it seems to me the facts are not very consistent with your claim of these 'hostile environments' of my threads making people not post in them. Let me say up front that I'm not going to agree with every comment made; some arguments will get criticism, as constructive as possible.
Looking at the current first page, my first topic that no one wants to post in has 61 posts. The second, 40 posts. The third, 60 posts.
The fourth has only two replies, but as neither is from me, it'd he hard to claim that my replies to posters are the reason for the lack of interest posting to it.
But actually, you have a point - one of the two replies IS a pretty belligerent, and hostile post, with unsupported and snide sniping I can see why people would be turned off.
The post is from you.
(Edit: actually, I remember I was going to reply to his disagreeing with me on everything else with a friendly joke and didn't because you might well respond badly. I guess it did inhibit posting).
The other of the two replies is to me, saying "This is pretty much the only thing I've ever seen you post that I agree with. " Not much scaring him off.
The fifth of five threads by me has 40 replies.
Now, I'm very sensitive to courtesy here. That doesn't mean no flawed argument will have my opinion of those flaws posted; it will. But as I have for years, I'll go out of my way to try to make it constructive, to support it, to treat someone with more than the respect deserved. Something I can't say I see in your posts to me, but that's all I'll say as I wouldn't want the point to be long.
Now, something that WILL try to push people away from posting are some of your posts - rushing to turn any discussion of issues as posters into moderator threats (I'm not going to discuss that here, just mentioning public posts have been made and do that), and a lot of unsupported, broad-side type attacks.
Compare my criticism you complain about - 11 words saying 'please use quotes accurately', with the softening phrase 'there was no misrepresentation here', and the constructive suggestion, 'single quotes would be great for what you were saying' - oh the horrors, I'm glad that belligerent point didn't keep you from posting - with your broad attacks, not supported with evidence, and threatening - not only what I post, but even threatening that if I try to avoid conflict by not posting, NOT replying is a bannable offense also.
Seems to me you're projecting.
But as I was saying, I'm very sensitive to the issue, and to the extent there's constructive feedback - I haven't seen anyone say these things - I'll listen and consider it.
I'm sure we can all improve at times. Just yesterday, in response to what I felt was a very inappropriate sort of hostility, I made a (4 word) critical response 'not nice' in tone. Reconsidering it, I just deleted the offensive comment and my reply from my post instead, leaving it in the person's post unanswered (and unmoderated, but I'm not discussing that - it's your call).
Now, let's address your "cherry" point - my objection to your post of "absurd".
I know this is long - but it's long for a reason, it takes what it takes to respond to your points. It's a lot easier to throw out a word (such as "absurd") without any support than to respond to it with one word - at least one, that's not a bit hostile. So, ths gets a bit longer to respond.
I made a point. Some people were arguing a principle: that saving lives was justification for torture, and that even 'a chance' of getting information that would save lives justified it.
Whether responding to people who actually took that position or just the position itself, I answered.
The point I was making is that people sometimes tend to create general 'rules' out of a situation that don't hold up to other situations. This closely maps to the point that if you open the door to turture for a ticking nuclear bomb scenario, it pretty much inevitably leads to a far broader use. My point helped show how.
I took the general principle implied by these people's positions in the 'ticking bomb' scenario with even a possibility of getting useful info and the fact that police can kill to save even one life - principles that are implied to be, 'saving any number of innocent lives against criminal/terrorist action justifies the use of torture when it will possibly obtain information that will save those lives'.
Now, the whole point I was making was to apply those principles to other situations, and have people say, 'wait a minute, I'm against torture there', and realize why those general rules they were using to justify one situation, weren't really adequate by showing how they didn't justify a different situation, and get them to rethink the first issue.
The whole point in doing this sort of thing is that they'll object to the use of torture in the second situation - it might seem 'absurd', which is MY point. The absurdity is what I'm pointing out in the rules they're asserting - not in my argument. If someone said in response to 9/11 'we should ban Muslims from the US', and I said, because of the Oklahama bombing, should we ban Christians also, the correct response might be to say 'no, that's absurd - oh wait a minute, then maybe my call to ban all Muslims is absurd also' - but what you're suggesting is to call the argument pointing out Oklohoma 'absurd', like it's wrong and clearly it's good to ban Muslims and not Christians.
Back to my argument - it created a scenario with all the same elements of innocent lives at stake, criminals/terrorists planning to kill, and access to people some of whom could pretty much certainly share information that might save those innoecent lives - but in my case, other things were changed, showing that just applying the rules being advocated would logically demand terrible actions.
Yes, if you tortured the villagers in my hypothetical, you likely would get actionable information to find taliban that would save lives - but we object to that sort of 'brutal' behavior. We accept the losses from the taliban rather than use such terrible measures to prevent them. And recognizing that, the hope is for people to then question, maybe this same logic I'm using to justify torture is terrible there, too. At least the rules are pretty clearly inadequate as general rules to justify torture. That's the point.
All your response did was completely miss the point of my question, by calling it 'absurd'. Well of course torturing the villagers would be 'absurd' - that was MY point.
The absurdity comes from the rules they were using for one situation, when applied to another.
There was nothing absurd about my argument pointing that out. You simply missed the point.
I criticized it not only for missing the point but for being a 'name calling' argument without any support.
Now, we might not agree on the term 'name calling argument'. I'll explain and defend my use, but I'm more than happy to change it - even just remove it - for that post.
If I say your agument is a straw man (and if it's not obvious, provide supporting evidence), that's a 'substantive' criticism. If I say you got a fact incorrect, that's substantive.
What I mean by name-calling - and it can apply to a person or an argument - is when instead of substance, it's just a critical word.
So saying 'your argument is crap' is a name-calling argument. It's calling your argument a name, rather than making a substantive criticism. Hopefully - one small step I can do to shoren this post - I don't need to provide 50 more examples of similarly 'name calling' words to explain.
Now, "absurd" is actually a bit of a gray case - but it's not substantive without either being obviously true or evidence to support it.
If you argue "don't vote for Obama, because his middle name will influence him to be a terrorist", I can appropriately call that 'absurd' as a response. It's an accurate criticism. If you sincerely believe it, I might be gentler and try to actually explain why it's absurd, but that's still a good word.
But absurd can also be thrown around as a general attack word like 'crap'. I say "Barack Obama is my choice for President", and you say "that's absurd!"
Sorry, but they just used absurd as name-calling. And your just calling my argument 'absurd' - even through you tossed in a few irrelevant latin words about absurd with it - without any support actually proving my argument was absurd, led me to call it a 'name calling argument'.
And that's where it stands, that it seems to me my argument is not absurd, the absurdity in it is there as the point of the argument, and that you just missed the point.
Now, maybe my argument is absurd. If I tried to claim that the rules justifying shooting a hostage taker are invalid because they'd also justify shooting prisoners in custody in cold blood, that would be a case where you should call my argument 'absurd' - not because it contains the absurdity of shooting prisoners, but because of the absurdity of the claim that the rules for hostage takers are the same as the rules for prisoners.
If you can make a case that anything in my argument made an error like that, please do so, and I'll thank you if you can. But if all you can show is that shooting villagers is absurd, well, that was my point, and you haven't shown my argument was absurd at all - only that you missed the point of it.
Facebook
Twitter