Forum Philosophy Update

:open_mouth: If I break the rules then I ought to get penalized. That’s only fair.

I regret posts where I was manipulative and where I let my frustration get the better of my judgement.

It does appears that you are “bewildered” by my ethics, morality and motivations. The fact that I want the current forum rules to be enforced seems to be “bewildering”.

The forum rules are not being enforced so it hardly matters if those rules are replaced by new rules which are not going to be enforced.

Furthermore, you don’t have a problem with breaking the written rules, so really the only rules in effect would those that “the community” gets together on at any moment. These “rules” (for lack of a better word) are going to be vague and undefined. Right?

Since there are only about 20 active members here, in practice the shaming would be done by two or three people.

Why are you asking me another question? I asked for an answer from Karpel and you.

Here I would need you to note what that advice actually was. That way I could comment on its applicability given the existential parameters of my own life here and now. And the extent to which I have the option to act on it with respect to conflicting value judgments in the is/ought world.

Instead, you note this:

This is embedded far more in the either/or world. Many do in fact suffer from back pain. And these methods have in fact been demonstrated to be effective in relieving that pain.

It can all be more or less measured if the options are pursued.

On the other hand, you could tell a woman that if she does not want to risk a possible unwanted pregnancy, she should avoid sex altogether. Or engage only in oral sex or anal sex or masturbation.

But if she chooses to engage in vaginal sex and practices safe sex and still becomes pregnant, is it rational/virtuous to abort the pregnancy?

How is that calculated with any degree of finality? What advice could someone like Moreno offer to her?

What could be more discomfiting for a man or woman then to confront the question “how ought one to live?” and come to conclude this:

If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.

Since you are not drawn and quartered yourself when confronting conflicting goods in a No God world, I would not expect you to grasp just how discomfiting that frame of mind can be.

On the other hand, what if you come to embody it yourself?

Then you too could seek out possible remedies.

Yes, but this “social mammal” construes “I” here in the is/ought world as revolving largely around this:
viewtopic.php?f=1&t=176529

Here, shame/shaming is deemed to be an existential/political contraption rooted in dasein, conflicting goods and political economy.

In other words, while I come into this world with the genetic capacity to feel and/or inflict shame, that is always situated out in a particular world awash in any number of conflicting memetic narratives.

Consequently, to what extent can philosophers pin all of this down such that shame/shaming is understood wholly, essentially, objectively, naturally, deontologically.

Note to others:

Is this actually true?!! :wink:

Still, let him bring this accusation down to earth by noting behaviors that often come into conflict over conflicting goods and we can broach the components of our respective philosophies more, say, substantively.

Okay, all of that may well be true. But to the best of my knowledge no one here is required to read my repetitious groots. Let alone respond to them and be made fools of.

Not unlike, for example, you? :-k

I’m not going to go rummaging through thousands of posts. It ought to be easy enough for you to remember if you took any advice offered on this forum. Since you can’t I think that the answer is ‘no’.

Another one of your side shifts. My point was that there are reasons why people stop talking to you which have nothing to do with being uncomfortable with the philosophical contents of your posts.

I am reminded of the end of ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’:

Note the difference between you and him.

So, we’ll just have to take your word for it.

Or let’s start from scratch:

Pertaining to the OP, what advice would you offer me when pointing out that the conflicting narratives being debated here are embedded in assumptions that can be construed as reasonable given a particular premise regarding the creation of rules in discussion groups of this sort?

Is there a way of “acting” so as to demonstrate the most rational argument being made?

But my point is always in making a distinction between discussions that can be resolved regarding actual facts embedded in this thread, and discussions in which folks may well terminate an exchange because they do in fact feel uncomfortable confronting the possiblity that their own arguments here are just existential contraptions – and not reflections of the optimal or the only rational conclusion.

But that’s up to each participant to mull over.

But that is just a myth! In reality, flesh and blood human beings actually are confronted with social, political and economic contexts/interactions in which conflicting goods are very much bombarding them.

Reactions to Trumpworld for example.

Can they be resolved philosophically?

I consider that. And here and now it seems reasonable that the manner in which I articulate my dilemma above still makes sense.

How does it not make sense to you? to others?

Again, what else is there here but to bring it down to earth? In much the manner that the OP is discussed and debated here on this thread. I merely note the distinction between those who do seem convinced that others are in fact, among other things, “idiots” for not seeing things their way, and folks like me.

No fucking dilemmas for them right?

Instead, they are able to nestle down into one or another fundamental frame of mind that sustains the sort of psychological comfort and consolation that is simply not within my reach here and now.

We will have to, since you can’t or won’t say. :confusion-shrug:

Your posts are entirely about your distinctions, your dilemma, your points and your navel lint.

You wonder why people leave.

Camus was writing about his experiences and his understanding of the world. That’s how writing works. Why do I need to say it?

Yes but why is it only fair if an authority punishes you rather than your peers? Again, you don’t want to be a daddy, but you claim to need one. Why?

It’s bewildering because you are advocating for your own punishment from an authority figure. It’s not bewildering because you have ethics, but it’s bewildering that you would need an authority to enforce your own ethics (as if you cannot control your own self).

Again I ask: Why do the ones breaking the most rules advocate strongest for the enforcement of rules from an authority?

And the corollary is that the ones arguing against authoritarian control seem to need it least and be most-able to control themselves (ie Karpel Tunnel).

You’re not advocating having any set rules or any set process. You’re advocating some vague shifting “community standards” which are enforced when a mini mob descends on a poor slob and makes him feel guilty and ashamed.

I prefer a book of rules and some guys with jackboots. That way at least I know where I stand.

Apparently you need your peers to shame you into conforming. What are you so self-righteous about?

Why are you asking me another question? :confusion-shrug:

I can’t answer your question until I ascertain more information from you. I have to know if those rules you have in mind would exist in nature without authority. But now that I’ve told you that, it’s impossible for me to be assured that your answer will be innocent and objective since you’re likely to seek rules that cannot exist without enforcement of authority just to undermine my reasoning because too often what is important is winning the debate; not determining what is best.

This is probably why Carleas included the rule: If a moderator sees a poster presenting an argument and dismissing any counterpoints without engaging them a warning may be issued. Because all other violations apparently stem from that. A person will stop at nothing to prevent conceding defeat which is the immorality that often engenders insults et al and people dogmatically digging-in often causes reasonable people to leave, which threatens speech-maximization.

It’s imperative to the functioning of the community to adhere to the ethos of fair-mindedness in debate because if cheating is rampant, then no one will decide to play and the community devolves into a monkey house. Ethics is not something that can be mandated since the unethical will always find subtle and ingenious ways around the rules and no one is perfectly ethical anyway.

There is an Alan Watts story where an emperor decided to engrave the rules on pottery so the community can know the law, but his advisers told him that’s the worst thing he could do because then it will be a litigious society of those engineering ways around the law and reduce judges to inflexible machines merely dispensing prescribed justice.

If the rules are not enforced, then why are you here? You said you only agreed to be here if there were rules. If you say that the rules that exist are not enforced, then you’ve undermined your own reasoning for being here. The contract is null and void, yet you adhere to it.

If you say you were fooled, then why did it take 8 years to figure that out? Surely you have witnessed countless transgressions that were not recompensed, yet you decided to stay. How come?

How can you say that you’re here only because there are rules in place, but do not leave upon noticing that the rules are not enforced? Cognitive dissonance? :confusion-shrug: What else can explain that?

I guess that’s one way of putting it, but I’m not arguing against having rules, but that the community should determine and enforce them. But obviously the community can’t have the keys to the kingdom and an authority will have to handle violent offenders who disrupt in action. I’m not advocating a lawless anarchy per se, but more involvement of the community concerning the definition and punishment of offensiveness. Although the analogy of mob rule is succinct, it isn’t quite accurate.

I want to address that a bit more. Suppose you rescue a baby from a burning building and a mini mob arrives to ridicule you. Would you feel ashamed? Of course not. You would only feel ashamed if you actually did something shameful and were called-out by the mini mob.

A proverb is no proverb until life has illustrated it - keats. So you cannot feel shame until your life as illustrated how your action was shameful.

Yeah, that seems reasonable and the lawyers agree :wink: “Tell me the letter of the law that I may find ways around it” :evilfun:

Well, it’s more the thought of my peers shaming me that prevents me from acting shamefully in the first place, so I don’t need them except in my own mind.

I read on youtube:

“you’re stupid!”
“do you often talk to stupid people?”
no reply.

So I think “Do I want to be the guy calling someone stupid?” No, that’s stupid! “Slander is the tool of the loser”, so why would I want to do that? I don’t need anyone to tell me not to act like an idiot… it’s just something that I intrinsically do not want to do, though I don’t always succeed lol

Probably lots of stuff… unfortunately. :confused: I think it’s just part of existing in a duality.

Probably, just as they are being done in workplaces, social groups, hobby groups, organizations. However if the larger group dislikes what the smaller group is doing, if they, for example disagree and think that this is just bullying, they will hopefully come to the defense of that person, or raise the idea that it is more complex. I think you refer to this as a minimob somewhere. Which it certainly could be and for anyone who thinks that the forum social rules are wrong, the liklihood increases that they will think that they will think it is a mob, rather than representatives relaying that behaviors X are disliked by the group. And yes, this can evolve over time. As far as them being vague and undefined, I think they may be more complex than the current list. They will likely allow for more nuance and exceptions. IOW I would guess that the occasional insult would be accepted. Instead of a commandment based list, you would have more of a consequentialist evaluation. Thou shalt not X, replaced by situation based analyses - even if these are often done intuitively.

It may seem like the groups you are in do not use shaming and you do not use shaming or approve of shaming, but in my varied and long life I have not encountered any group that did not punish bad behavior through actions and words which cause shame. These include subtler stuff, like judging but not saying it, being distant and treating other people with warmth. Personally I find that more unpleasant than a blame filled confrontation where issues are aired and I can clearly see what is bothering people about me. Others may have different tastes, but both extremes can and do cause shame.

We can let daddy do everything. Carleas can decide what the infractions are, look at it in a rule based way, ban a couple of people a decade and ignore the commandments. I think this has contributed to low standards of interaction. There is a lot of not really responding to people’s points and other rudenesses that if turned into infractions would put an incredible burden on Carleas, since he would have to go into these discussions and do some analysis. Not fair to him. Demeaning to us to demand/expect a parental role for something we can do ourselves. As it is we have a lot of solipsistic posts made by people who cannot really interact with the ideas of others and really, have no reason to think they need to. Philosophy as expressing opinions. The rephrasing these. I ambiguous could practically be a bot or terribly weak AI, one that questionably passes a Turing test.

It puts a lot of responsibility on members. They probably need to refrain from feeding subtle trolls and the more easy to notice right off kind. They need to demand better responses.

It might not even work. But it is not working now.

I notice that Prismatic is getting precisely this kind of feedback. People have moved from shaming to shunning, formally ending interaction. The problem is, I know it myself, it is easy to get redrawn back in, perhaps before the person moves away. I don’t think any feedback will set Iambiguous in motion to another forum (or change the way he posts.) He seems to content to talk to the ether in a number of his threads. But still, it would be interesting to see what would happen if more people took to shaming, then shunning. Waht would the quality be like in the remaining interactions. Would a kind of forum culture become clearer. Would the loss of frustration dealing with solipsistic posters, lead to a more open dialogue between the others, where people concede points, explore, are honest when they realize they still disagree but the other person made a good point they have no riposte for (yet, perhaps) and so on. My guess is that there would beo some improvement but nothing grand. But hey, we could see and a little improvement would be something.

That would make sense if the only reason (or main reason) to be in a philosophy forum was to engage in the enforcement of rules. Since it’s not, my answer seems to be obvious.

What???

Yeah, I might do that if I knew what the hell you were talking about. LOL.

My question was asking what happens to the person who disagrees with you guys.

There is no process proposed for deciding on the rules and no reason to think that you will treat any fixed set of rules as binding.

Basically this system of shaming would just “start up”.

One or two or three of you will start shaming someone based on your “personal standards”. Then a person who disagrees has the choice of ignoring it, getting into an argument with you about the “standard” or leaving the forum.

None of which are appealing.

As I just wrote, there is no process for selecting the rules. Are you proposing a vote?

How many members really want to be part of the enforcement?

That sounds good in theory but in practice people are made to feel shame when they have no reason to.
The process of being shamed is unpleasant even when you have no reason to feel shame.

Then if you don’t feel shame, you are shunned. #-o

These are unfortunate and real aspects of shaming and shunning.

You make it seem as if only 'the guilty" would suffer shaming and shunning.

You rescue a Jewish baby and you are ridiculed by the Nazi mob. :confusion-shrug:

That’s a simplistic example. You see yourself as agreeing with the rightness of the shaming.
But what if you don’t agree. What if you are pressured to act in a way which you don’t want to act? Then you are up against the mob. Are you sure that you are not going to cave in to them? If you don’t cave then you’re shunned.

Thanks for that explanation.

I think that you are pulling a lot of normal social interaction under that category of shame/shaming.
For example, I didn’t stop talking to Prismatic because I’m shaming or shunning him, I stopped talking to him because he has not said anything new for weeks. I have already responded many times to his “general problem solving method”, his “psychological angst” and his definition of “perfection”. I’m bored and uninterested now. But that’s not a punishment.

I don’t think it’s realistic to try to punish this. I have been accused of that exact “failing” and I can produce a list of reasons why those accusations are BS. Of course, some days I’m in a bad mood, or frustrated or distracted by other concerns … so I was probably a rude prick some of the time. :evilfun:

:-k Iambig is constantly saying that I’m not responding to his points. :laughing:

“not responding to a person’s point”

When I feel that someone is not responding to my points, I usually think that either I have not expressed myself clearly or the other person does not understood my point. Either way, I’m basically talking Swahili to him/her.

There are instances when he will call me a “libtard” or “Randian thug” or something similar and just refuse to respond to the points. Ironically I’m accused of having both extreme right wing and extreme left wing views. :laughing:

Sure, any instance of not responding to a point is just that, and instance. We all miss points, we all misunderstand, writers responsible also as well as readers for these instances. But patterns are another thing. Intelligence can be a factor, but one can also see patterns of willful avoidance, strawmen use and clear patterns of not reading not just one’s own posts but those of others.