Discussion Thread Re: 8/3 No Insults Rule Amendment

[Moonbeam]

shira: You are wrong in what you write here. Cybrsage is not a conservative responding to liberals. He's not someone who has any interest in making serious, logical arguments rebutting liberal arguments. Cybrsage's MO is to take words our of context, mischaracterize the meanings of posts, make sweeping unsupported claims, bait posters rather than engage them, ignore well-written cogent arguments, and just plain lie.

M: These are beliefs I share but I do not reach the same conclusion as you do. I believe he is a conservative responding to liberals in exact kind as he sees us responding to them and him. His aim is to show us that as far as he is concerned our points of view are relative, that what we take as truth is just as delusional as what we claim about liberals. His aim doesn't have to be about a discussion of truth, simply a game of shoving your truth back in your face. This, in my opinion, is exactly what anybody with a brain would do given the rules of the forum. He has just as much right to reflect back your contempt of him as he sees it as you do to him.

s: The central point about Cybrsage is that he has no interest in truth. He contributes nothing of value to either the liberal or conservative voices here an ATPN. He's is an unalterable destructive force that makes ATPN worse for everyone.

M: Again, he has no interest in your truth. He has every right, given the forum structure, to call you the destructive force. There is no truth you can assert that he can't counter with it's opposite so long as no reasoning is required.

s: Permabanning him has nothing to do with silencing a conservative voice to somehow protect liberal from conservatives. Because Cybrsage isn't a "conservative voice." What you may think is his voice is actually the flatulent sound of Cybrsage shitting on you.

M: His position is that you and I shit on him. He has every right to shit back as long as forum rules permit it. My claim is that not banning him has nothing to do with not protecting liberals from conservatives, shit fertilizes my garden, but a state of liberal denial, a refusal to be intolerant by maintaining struck forum rules of etiquette that will get them called that, intolerant. It's the destructiveness of liberal guilt, in my opinion, the refusal to face the fact that conservatives will use their liberal natures against them. Those liberals who do not have a stomach for such aggressive hostility in return for their passive aggressiveness, will leave.

In this way the forum will (in my opinion largely already has) collapse in a pile of conservative shit. The way to avoid that is to apply rules to the debate that are enforced on both sides, in my opinion. No put downs or assertions of opinion that are not stated as opinion politely, or backed up with arguments that purport to bolster that point of view.

The liberal nature of the forum structure can only work with liberals. As soon as you invite conservatives into the debate, they kick you in your open minded face. They don't come to debate, they come to win. This place feeds Christians to the lions while lamenting that lions like to eat. But we have to tolerate being eaten because we are liberals and know in our hearts that lions really mean well.

I figured this out by chance watching TV with my Dad as a kid of maybe 7. We were watching a nature show on the African rhino and one of got stuck in mud where it would eventually die. I told my Dad they should pull it out. He said, are you crazy, if they did that it would run them down. I knew, instinctively, that no creature could have such ingratitude, and that, being saved, it would be thankful.

Well sure enough, they pulled it out of the mud with a wench on a jeep, and it promptly knocked the jeep over.

Hehehe, I was emotionally crushed and chagrined, even up to today, but I learned a valuable lesson. Prepare to be fucked if you try to help someone. If you want to save a conservative, first put him in a cage so he can't charge you and upset your ideological wagon.

It took many more years to understand what I thought I saw in the rhino was me.

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

The purposeful spread of misinformation is against forum rules. He either has to stop doing it or prove it is not a lie. I am giving him the chance to try and prove his lie is not a lie. I suspect he cannot do it, and I suspect he will not actually even attempt to do it, but he deserves the chance to do it.

It is also more than just "the other half", he needs to support his lie that science proves it. This requires peer reviewed studies that are accepted by both the majority of scientists in that field and is repeatable. Herein is where his lie will be exposed, I suspect.

So about this misinformation rule? Have you reported yourself multiple times yet? Did you report yourself for the Iraq WMD lie? I mean you were proved wrong 4-5 times and you still posted lies about it.

Sure is funny how you have a rather, ahem, "unique" outlook on lies, somehow thinking that you are allowed to lie, but no one else.

 

[monovillage]

We have been told repeatedly that moderator resources are limited. According to the forum survey, the priority for most of P&N is trolling, intellectual dishonesty, willful misinformation, logical fallacies, and similar forms of disruption -- not superficial insults. Fix those content issues and there will be far less inclination for insults. You provided a perfect example of this earlier in this thread, by blatantly lying about others, a misbehavior designed to provoke negative reaction. Perhaps you should start there before trying to dictate to anyone else.

I didn't lie, we just disagree on what was said. I also pointed out that between you and dank you are the liberal version of cybr. I still think it's accurate.

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

I didn't lie, we just disagree on what was said. I also pointed out that between you and dank you are the liberal version of cybr. I still think it's accurate.

Holy false equivalency batman!

 

[monovillage]

Holy false equivalency batman!

Since when has "false equivalence" turned into some kind of mantra for liberals?
I find Bowfinger and Dank to be just as irritating and yapping as cybrsage. You may disagree, I don't care.

 

[Moonbeam]

Holy false equivalency batman!

His point of view at least was expressed as an opinion but without any rational support; your comment is stated as fact and backed up by a reference to bat man. I would have to give him a half point and you a zero. You cannot argue and expect me to know a false equivalency when I see one. I need the logic of you 'opinion' argued out as fact. Show me what is false, don't label it as such. Your words amount only to a dismissal of somebody else's opinion. Others should be able to dismiss yours as such with equal facility, no?

 

[Moonbeam]

So about this misinformation rule? Have you reported yourself multiple times yet? Did you report yourself for the Iraq WMD lie? I mean you were proved wrong 4-5 times and you still posted lies about it.

Sure is funny how you have a rather, ahem, "unique" outlook on lies, somehow thinking that you are allowed to lie, but no one else.

Exactly what cybr would say were the shoe on the other foot, it seems to me. Why would he have any less capacity to hold your views in contempt as you his?

I am not challenging your views for the sake of it. My aim is to show that what is good for the goose is good for the gander. The fault is not yours or his, in my opinion, but the fact that given the rules that apply to this forum, each must have the same rights to irrationality or rationality as the other. This is the trap liberals create for themselves when they design liberal forums. So long as putting the other person down as a liar and what not is allowed each person is entitled to his personal view point as to what is a lie. This, I believe, can be improved, by changing the forum rules. Require that points of view be supplied with personal reasons for that belief so that the argument takes place on the validity of the data supplied, with respect for the other person's beliefs required. No put downs, no personal smears, no innuendo, no opinions stated as facts. If there is any reality at all, and I see no reason not to assume that, then not all opinions are equally valid. I have no doubt that folk with irrational opinions will not abandon them in the light of reason, and that is their choice, but I think it can be demonstrated, at times, that this is what some choose to do.

 

[GarfieldtheCat]

Since when has "false equivalence" turned into some kind of mantra for liberals?
I find Bowfinger and Dank to be just as irritating and yapping as cybrsage. You may disagree, I don't care.

You may find them irritating, that is true.

But to compare them to each other is in no way comparable. One is a known troll, with a long history of lying, trolling, and willful obfuscation, while dank and bowfinger just post things that you do not agree with.

So yes, it's false equivalence to compare the two.

 

[monovillage]

You may find them irritating, that is true.

But to compare them to each other is in no way comparable. One is a known troll, with a long history of lying, trolling, and willful obfuscation, while dank and bowfinger just post things that you do not agree with.

So yes, it's false equivalence to compare the two.

I think all three are known trolls, hell i'm a known troll as are you at times. Why pretend otherwise?

 

[Moonbeam]

Since when has "false equivalence" turned into some kind of mantra for liberals?
I find Bowfinger and Dank to be just as irritating and yapping as cybrsage. You may disagree, I don't care.

Exactly. It makes perfect sense not to care given that you don't have to defend your position. Only a liberal would waste his time caring.

 

[monovillage]

Exactly. It makes perfect sense not to care given that you don't have to defend your position. Only a liberal would waste his time caring.

I care about you moonie.

 

[Moonbeam]

I think all three are known trolls, hell i'm a known troll as are you at times. Why pretend otherwise?

Because liberals pride themselves on being rational. Like you, I don't have that problem. They want to hide from themselves their intolerance of the irrationality of conservatives by pretending they don't have such feelings. This, I believe, is why they have not initiate rules of intolerance towards irrationality in the forum. They don't want to seem intolerant. "Let the rhino knock over the jeep called planet earth. I just want to be fair." These are my opinions. They should be taken as such.

 

[Bowfinger]

I didn't lie, we just disagree on what was said. I also pointed out that between you and dank you are the liberal version of cybr. I still think it's accurate.

You're lying again. There is no disagreement about what was said. The words are still there in black and white for anyone to read. You lied about them, asserting, "As Bowfinger posted earlier, it's not really the word choice or how it's applied, it only matters who it gets applied to." That is the opposite of what I posted. My comment focused on behaviors and how word choices apply based on those behaviors, but said not a single word about the "who", be it an individual or group.

You are perfectly welcome to your opinion on me compared to Cybrsage. I'd suggest it's a ridiculous position (and a lame insult attempt), if only because he is consistently and shamelessly dishonest, whereas I try to ensure my comments are always honest (whether you agree with them or not). He also posts an average of over 1,000 posts per month, whereas I've averaged less than 100. If you want to stand up with him, however, you're certainly free to do so.

More to the point of this thread, I note your reply completely ignores that topic, even though that was the greatest part of my comment to which you replied. Do you have anything on-topic to address my points? (You know, limited moderator resources, insults being a lower priority for P&N members than more substantive, disruptive behaviors, and the premise that addressing those high priority issues will inherently reduce insults as well by reducing the behaviors that provoke insults.)

 

[Moonbeam]

I care about you moonie.

Thank you but would it be too much to ask for a partial list of the millions of reasons why you should? Insurance, you understand, in case somebody trys to call you irrational.....

 

[Jaskalas]

...
If you want to save a conservative, first put him in a cage so he can't charge you and upset your ideological wagon.
...

Would you really be reaching out to them if only the civilized ones remain? Perhaps those of us able to cope with your cage aren't actually 'conservative' as you see it.

 

[monovillage]

Thank you but would it be too much to ask for a partial list of the millions of reasons why you should? Insurance, you understand, in case somebody trys to call you irrational.....

Because you play WoW.

 

[shira]

shira: You are wrong in what you write here. Cybrsage is not a conservative responding to liberals. He's not someone who has any interest in making serious, logical arguments rebutting liberal arguments. Cybrsage's MO is to take words our of context, mischaracterize the meanings of posts, make sweeping unsupported claims, bait posters rather than engage them, ignore well-written cogent arguments, and just plain lie.

M: These are beliefs I share but I do not reach the same conclusion as you do. I believe he is a conservative responding to liberals in exact kind as he sees us responding to them and him. His aim is to show us that as far as he is concerned our points of view are relative, that what we take as truth is just as delusional as what we claim about liberals. His aim doesn't have to be about a discussion of truth, simply a game of shoving your truth back in your face. This, in my opinion, is exactly what anybody with a brain would do given the rules of the forum. He has just as much right to reflect back your contempt of him as he sees it as you do to him.

You're wrong. This forum is about the discussion of truth, the interchange of ideas. The fact the most threads fail at this objective just means that emotions frequently get in the way of rational discourse. But in almost every thread, there are serious posts that took time and good intent to write. This is what all of us should be striving for; and most of us do most of the time. Everyone lets their egos get in the way from time to time, but my observation is that most members of this forum have sincerely-held beliefs and want to play fair.

If you think that someone like Cybrsage shouldn't be perma-banned, then you are against ANYONE being banned. Because as far as I can see, he's the worst we've ever had here. Why should name-calling be considered a worse offense than maliciously obstructing the very purpose of ATPN.

As to your point that Cybrsage believes he's doing exactly what liberals are doing to him, that's irrelevant. There are objective standards of reality here, and they apply to everyone. No one gets a pass. For example, most of us here don't make a habit of lying; he does. Most of us here don't make a habit of willfully mischaracterizing the serious posts of others; he does. Most of us don't divert and evade when a well-written post defeats us.; he ALWAYS does.

The real point is: Cybrsage's delusions of what liberals are doing are not relevant. If he has mental problems that interfere with his ability to distinguish fact from reality, that's his burden to bear. As has been said many times, everyone's entitled to their opinion, but no one is entitled to their version of the facts.

s: The central point about Cybrsage is that he has no interest in truth. He contributes nothing of value to either the liberal or conservative voices here an ATPN. He's is an unalterable destructive force that makes ATPN worse for everyone.

M: Again, he has no interest in your truth. He has every right, given the forum structure, to call you the destructive force. There is no truth you can assert that he can't counter with it's opposite so long as no reasoning is required.

He has that right only if the community agrees that his actions are consistent with the well-being of the forum. If he were a "member in good standing," adding value to this forum, then of course he would be free to call someone else's actions destructive.

But we don't cater to psychotically destructive behavior here (and that's giving Cybrsage the benefit of the doubt that he's not actually a sociopath). Our purpose isn't to let everyone shout and scream and say anything they want. This is a forum with rules, and one of them is that members by and large act honorably, according to objective standards of honor. And since by almost any fair-minded person's evaluation of his behavior Cybrsage acts without honor, he should be expelled.

s: Permabanning him has nothing to do with silencing a conservative voice to somehow protect liberal from conservatives. Because Cybrsage isn't a "conservative voice." What you may think is his voice is actually the flatulent sound of Cybrsage shitting on you.

M: His position is that you and I shit on him. He has every right to shit back as long as forum rules permit it. My claim is that not banning him has nothing to do with not protecting liberals from conservatives, shit fertilizes my garden, but a state of liberal denial, a refusal to be intolerant by maintaining struck forum rules of etiquette that will get them called that, intolerant. It's the destructiveness of liberal guilt, in my opinion, the refusal to face the fact that conservatives will use their liberal natures against them. Those liberals who do not have a stomach for such aggressive hostility in return for their passive aggressiveness, will leave.

Again, his "position" is irrelevant. Objectively, he's wrong. By your standard, if a man with mental problems believes he's being mortally attacked by a child shooting a thin stream of water at him from a water pistol, and that man takes out his handgun and puts a bullet through the child's head, that man has a perfect right to do it. Is this what you believe? I don't think so. Even you recognize that innocents must be protected by the destructively insane.

And it equally doesn't matter if Cybrsage thinks a liberal staking him to the wall with a well-written argument that devastate his position is "shitting on him." He isn't allowed that freedom to be irrational, not here.

In this way the forum will (in my opinion largely already has) collapse in a pile of conservative shit. The way to avoid that is to apply rules to the debate that are enforced on both sides, in my opinion. No put downs or assertions of opinion that are not stated as opinion politely, or backed up with arguments that purport to bolster that point of view.

So you want rules. Presumably, your rules are intended to foster meaningful discourse. And what is the appropriate response when a member again and again violates the rules YOU advocate? Surely, the ultimate response must be perma-banning, or else the rules are meaningless.

And if you agree that perma-banning is a valid response to continual violations of the rules YOU advocate, then you and I aren't disagreeing at all. We're just haggling over which set of rules to apply.

And by the way, even under your rules, Cybrsage gets perma-banned.

The liberal nature of the forum structure can only work with liberals. As soon as you invite conservatives into the debate, they kick you in your open minded face. They don't come to debate, they come to win. This place feeds Christians to the lions while lamenting that lions like to eat. But we have to tolerate being eaten because we are liberals and know in our hearts that lions really mean well.

I figured this out by chance watching TV with my Dad as a kid of maybe 7. We were watching a nature show on the African rhino and one of got stuck in mud where it would eventually die. I told my Dad they should pull it out. He said, are you crazy, if they did that it would run them down. I knew, instinctively, that no creature could have such ingratitude, and that, being saved, it would be thankful.

Well sure enough, they pulled it out of the mud with a wench on a jeep, and it promptly knocked the jeep over.

Hehehe, I was emotionally crushed and chagrined, even up to today, but I learned a valuable lesson. Prepare to be fucked if you try to help someone. If you want to save a conservative, first put him in a cage so he can't charge you and upset your ideological wagon.

It took many more years to understand what I thought I saw in the rhino was me.

Well, it sounds like what you're advocating is that ALL conservatives be banned, because they're incapable of rational discourse. You defend Cybrsage's right to exist here, but what you really want is that all conservatives here be banished. That would lead to a pretty boring ATPN.

Forgive me if I don't respond to your response. I'm not ignoring you. I just don't want to waste any more time on the worst troll this forum has ever know, Cybrsage.

 

[Moonbeam]

"Forgive me if I don't respond to your response. I'm not ignoring you. I just don't want to waste any more time on the worst troll this forum has ever know, Cybrsage."
--------------

Then I will not reply and it won't bother me. If what you say of cybrsage is true than it must also be true of me.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

Why is it that people who are supposed to be so mature can't figure out how to use the forum ignore function?

 

[Bowfinger]

Why is it that people who are supposed to be so mature can't figure out how to use the forum ignore function?

You have already been offered that answer, when you asked that question earlier in this very thread. If you are just going to ignore the response, what's the point in you asking or anyone answering?

 

[Moonbeam]

Why is it that people who are supposed to be so mature can't figure out how to use the forum ignore function?

Back a while ago when there was a great hubbub in L and R over my insistence that relationships are ruined by self hate, the inability to feel loved by another because we really feel worthless, the forum mod asked the same question, but it did no good. I came to the conclusion that folk would not put me on ignore for fear they might miss catching me saying something stupid for which they could put me down. It's kind of hard to establish bona fide critiques of folk when you don't know what they say. It seems too that everywhere folk are bigoted against ideas they don't hold and want to silence those voices.

 

[monovillage]

Why is it that people who are supposed to be so mature can't figure out how to use the forum ignore function?

Just because I don't respond to the liars and weasels and lil' yapping dogs doesn't mean I don't want to see what's being said.

 

[JEDIYoda]

Why is it that people who are supposed to be so mature can't figure out how to use the forum ignore function?

rofl.....Londo had nothing intelligent to say so he posted this...see above comment^^^^^^

 

[Jaskalas]

Did you guys just suggest the ignore function is a substitute for forum rules?

I'll tell you now, it's not.

 

[Londo_Jowo]

rofl.....Londo had nothing intelligent to say so he posted this...see above comment^^^^^^

So what exactly is so intelligent about your reply? ^^^^^^