"Ad Hominous ThreadS"

No, I situate thoughts I have about these things in particular contexts and try to show how people can think about the context from differing [conflicting] points of view that objectivists are then unable to distill down to the most rational point of view. Aside from “up there” of course.

The difference between your objectivism and the objectivism of many others I have encountered is that you refuse even to engage your theoretical constructs [your definitions] out in the world of actual conflicting behaviors. Whether with respect to the Mormon couple or John and Mary and the unborn child or any particular new context you might introduce] it always comes down to either agreeing with the internal logic of your theoretical abstractions or not.

I went through the trouble to do a search for threads where Smears (mr r) talked about the subject/object distinction and found a pretty great example of a healthier atmosphere on this forum, with Smears leading the discussion no less.

http://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=157191

We ought to step up and try to turn this forum around. I don’t get the same feeling when I come to ILP anymore, this place has a lot of negative and prohibitive energy for me and I don’t think I’m the only one. I think people of the current membership have come to be so familiar with one another that ego has taken the forefront and we can’t see past personality anymore to have a thoughtful thread. Go back to almost any random old thread, the character of the discussion is worlds different. I mean, there are still some occasional good discussions, but the general mood at ILP has grown a lot more sour and combative over the years which just feeds back on itself prohibiting thoughtfulness.

I think everyone who’s posted in this thread is in one way or another a “heavy hitter” for this site, not just as veteran members but as fairly thoughtful people. If anyone holds weight in setting a tone throughout the forum it’s some of the people in here.

What’s the barrier to setting a better tone for the site?
Don’t you all agree that it would be better to have less of the soap opera personal battles constantly exploding across the site and more threads like the one I linked above, where people feel at ease to just think freely?

Its only been in the lasy few months that ive even payed attention to wbo im talking to. I dont even know these people. I mean i just realized not long ago that james is on the RM kick. I make it a point not to know any of you. It helps me sort the bs. Lately, the site has been flooded and spammed by the same racist, sexist kts member hiding thier idebtitjes and ruining any kind of good discussion. I think that has to be addressed. Even still, its not the racism or sexism that’s the main problem. Its that the reasoning is poor. The posters are incoherent and the shit only serves as a distraction to good discourse. Anyone who doesnt see this is an idiot.

Proper moderation.

You can’t blame this on KTS members.

The old members have become nasty. The new members are more interested in dishing out subtle insults and stroking their egos than in a productive discussion.

Moderation is a convenient scapegoat and an easy way to avoid personal responsibility.

I’m rather surprised at that, FC. You don’t generally strike me as the type of person who is influenced in such a way by the actions of others (your perception of those actions) that you would emulate them and then blame your actions/behavior on others. I thought that you were more noble than that.

What’s the expression, Fixed Cross - “If we are not part of the solution, we are part of the problem.”
Of course, you are entitled to your “opinion” your 'perception" - but if indeed that is your perception, that ILP is THAT, “just a place of shit”, in what way does dropping your own verbal diarrhea clean ILP up?
If we are treating people in a bad way, it is OUR VERY OWN DECISION to do that. Are we THAT helpless?
Are we so swayed by public opinion and example? Are we sheep or are we Eagles?

Arc - at one point it’s just karma. Don’t imagine that your comment is different in nature.

Smears - please produce the basic premises of Value Ontology and Rational Metaphysics.

Fixed, you don’t have to keep on. You can just admit you were wrong man. I know it’s hard.

I don’t think poor reasoning is the main problem with the site. Hopefully we all examine our reasoning and improve it at times. The thread I linked probably had it’s share of poor reasoning in some of the posts, but everyone was more concerned with the project of understanding the subject/object distinction than “winning the argument.”

Pretty much.
At one point in time, the environment here was a lot more friendly and collegial.
I suppose circa 2004-2006, when I was getting involved, there was still some novelty in participating on a philosophy discussion board with people all over the world. It felt a bit more special and I think this carried over into how people treated each other.

One of the first threads I ever made here was about whether you wanted to win or to find the best possible answer. It’s probably buried under 100000 pages of people bashing women and people of other races.

The first argument I had here was with Gobbo. I was arguing the position that whether or not you agree with Dick Cheney’s morals and all, that his political prowess was something to be studied. I mean, how can a guy do all these horrible things that the world apparently doesn’t want him to do, and rise to such power that he impacts literally everything? Gobbo was all like, “he starts wars and eats babies for breakfast!”, and I was like “dude, that’s what I"m saying, how interesting is it that one man can position himself in the way that Cheney has?”

It was a pretty good one.

That’s part of it, but I think the responsibility falls largely on us as well. So why do we feed into the bullshit?
I definitely get caught up in it at times and I know all of us here have.

There’s always been that, but there also used to be a lot of pretty good friendly threads. Just look back at an old member’s post history and browse for a few minutes. Is it just me, or did the conversations generally take a more productive tone back then?

Well, when Faust, Tent, Gobbo and SIATD are all bored with it or tired of it and leave, then you’re going to end up with a conversation that just gets a little dumber. It is what it is man.

Okay you are on crack. It’s official.

Great job man.

You are aware that SIATD is the owner of Humanarchy, right?
What you probably don’t now is that it’s based on value ontology.

SIATD is one of the people who has adopted VO and is now in the process of learning about RM.

Gobbo had Value Ontology as his twitter account, which was a bit bizarre.

Thank you. But for real I"m like 5’10 and 200lbs. There’s no way I’m on crack. Those guys should come back. I don’t wanna go to a new website that no one knows about and that doesn’t have enough traffic to keep me entertained.

Siatd said to me that value ontology is better than crack. I don’t think he tried crack, but it’s an expression. Still, VO has been compared to numerous drugs. But unlike crack you can’t smoke it.

I’m not your priest.