I’ve been reading this thread for cassie, but this was just BAM, there.
Reposting for posterity.
I would. It’s odd that anyone be concerned with a forum for as long as Satyr has been concerned with this forum. It’s unusual for even a person who has been welcome here to still be here after so long. For him to have been unwelcome for most of the last half decade and still unable to let go of the connection, that’s strange. It’s obsessive.
And of course it’s an exaggeration to say he’s had no contact with us over that time, he’s never really left us alone (obsession). And that’s what keeps people talking about him: he keeps inserting himself into the minds of those here. But it seems disingenuous to say that he should have a right to return and defend what name he has here when the common reason his name is spoken is because he keep returning here.
I disagree. I disagree, first, that Satyr’s participation and disruption was ever impersonal. I’ve had my back-and-forths with him, I know how he engages and I know that it is essentially always personal. Rational people can disagree about that, but because the actions of the ILP staff take place in the perception of his conduct as personal, I will take that as the premise in addressing Smears’ participation.
A personal attack in defense of an idea draws a personal response. So when someone inserts that into a discussion, the level of the discussion descends twice: once when the comment is made, and once when there is a response that is a personal attack. And since this second personal attack will tend to provoke yet further personal attacks, the conversation quickly becomes a trade of insults, and the ideas are lost. On the other hand, when someone posts a general exhortation to stop thinking, the response is not the same. The topic may veer off course, but it might also just shift to the practical implications of the discussion at hand, which is not necessarily a bad thing. And while two parties engaged in a heated insult exchange are likely to continue it in other threads where they participate, someone drawn off course by an exhortation not to think in one thread is not likely to lose focus elsewhere.
Given your clarification, I think I did understand it, and I apologize if my response was not clear or complete.
As I said, quoting is a matter of degrees. Let’s take the bright-line rule from the other extreme. Suppose Steven Pinker was a huge ass on web forums, was incredibly disruptive to every conversation on the site, and contributed nothing to any conversation other than flooding insults. Would someone still be able to quote Pinker’s Language Instinct in a conversation about language or psychology? It seems the answer must be ‘yes’: the book’s ideas are valuable, and they could be used to inform and advance a discussion. Even though Steven Pinker was banned, his ideas wouldn’t be, and even the words he used to express them wouldn’t be. Here, the person quoting the work wouldn’t be acting as a proxy for Steven Pinker, but merely attributing ideas to their source in an appropriate context.
But again, this is the extreme. Maybe starting a thread that reads like a blog post written by Pinker would be treated differently (is Pinker likely to come here personally and defend attacks on his ideas that are posted in response?). And we aren’t talking about Pinker, so the balance of the value of access to the ideas as expressed by the banned member against the likelihood that verbatim inclusion will lead to a disruption may come out differently. As I said, it will be fact sensitive.
But ask this: what’s the goal in posting the words of a banned member? Is it to discuss philosophy? Or is it to toe the line? It looks a lot like an attempt to find a loophole in site moderation; it looks like participation in bad faith. If that’s the case, it’s not likely to be given much leeway when it comes to decisions of whether or not to moderate. Users have pretty broad freedom to discuss how they like, we aren’t going to sweat a decision to come down on someone who’s intentionally testing the boundaries.
He’s as “obsessed” as the other members are on your forum here who cannot stop taking his name even after he has gone and is permabanned. Doesn’t that strike you as equally obsessive?
That’s not a fact. He returns here only because his name and his views are taunted and mocked and his relentless “passion” to set straight his ideas and expose the flaws and motivations behind those making those caricatures does not equate to obsession.
As someone who has posted 5000+ posts or more, I can see why someone can feel this forum is much theirs as it is yours. And the sentiments attached to how it once was and what it has become now is as parallel as someone passionately reflecting over the state of our world, what it was once and what it has come to now. Somtimes with rage, sometimes with melancholy. This is normal human nature.
From such a view, one could even say, Life is an obsession.
You have no proof this has occurred at all in the Philosophy section, whereas Reasonable’s statements were so.
No proof anything was disrupted.
Satyr’s rants were only restricted to the rant section. And yet some past incident is used to justify present circumstance, which I think is absurd.
So someone constantly exhorting others in different ways to stop the pursuit of thinking and doing philosophy is tolerated on a philosophy forum, than the one Impersonally attacking such a “mentality”? wow.
No, that isn’t the case, where this exhortation happens in any thread certain subjects and certain authors are discussed. There’s a taboo and systemic discouragement and ‘booing’ happening here on certain areas that is really not in the spirit of open-minded philosophy.
Well, Pinker is a great topic. And this what he had to say on the subject of swearing and profanity:
Pinker wrote:
https://www.academia.edu/524061/Sexuality_and_Russian_Obscene_Language
"Profanity is way of getting the other to think an unpleasant thought."
Scientifically speaking, Profanity is only a “philosophical means” towards engaging with truths and facts that are hard to digest or confront, and so understandably feared and ostracized like a ‘pollution’.
This is not making it personal, but has a whole evolutionary history.
I was trying to ascertain if a thinker and his idea can be separated, and two, if the thinker is banned, can his ideas be objectively separated and engaged with - and you seemed to say yes. Then you also say, its finding a loophole into moderation. But if the awareness of thoughts and knowledge alone is the objective, then the focus on other motives is you personalizing things, I feel.
Ideas should be let to be expressed is my feeling.
Of course the decision is yours.
Yes.
As I said, I took the premise that Satyr’s comments were personal, that they attacked not the mentality but the person espousing it. Given that Satyr’s comments were taken to be personal, while Smears’ were not, it is reasonable to apply a moderation philosophy that forbids personal attacks to Satyr and not to Smears.
This is is a non-sequitur. We don’t ban for profanity and we don’t consider profanity to be a personal attack.
My point was to note that it can be both.
- Again, I take as a premise here that banning someone, for some length of time, is ever a reasonable moderation measure. If that’s the case, then prohibiting blatant circumvention of that ban through the use of a proxy is, by hypothesis, reasonable.
- As you note, ideas and people are different, and discussing a person’s ideas while they are banned, and even quoting that person in the expressions of their ideas, is not necessarily circumventing a ban, and should be allowed.
The point is that these two principles can be in tension, thus my two bright-line cases: - an account whose sole purpose is to circumvent a ban by acting as a proxy for a banned user and quoting the banned user’s replies to ongoing discussions is clearly prohibited.
- quoting a famous work of a recognized scholar in a field in a discussion on that field is clearly not prohibited, even if that scholar is currently banned from ILP.
Cases in the real world will fall in between these two, and the outcome will be fact-specific. The answer to the question, “Can you quote a banned user?”, is “it depends.”
Hmm, since this thread was started about me, I feel like I should say a few words.
There.
What are you really saying about Observer then?
So… what did you conclude in this particular case?
In a general case, how are you determining a false motive?