ecmandu as soon as you said “cosmic reconstruction” you lost another debate
You have zero percent access to the spirit world of the cosmos (that you know of); I have 100% access that I do know of:
We live very different lives.
It’s actually not your fault right now that you don’t experience any of those things; it’s also not your fault that I experience 100% of those things.
I think we should leave it there.
Even if you are wrong: even if the other person is not a troll when you think they are…
I think it is good to at least take breaks from the interaction. Perhaps weeks or months or permanent.
Why?
Because if you think they are a troll, you must be experiencing the back and forth as not getting anywhere. You are not learning about philosophy or even getting the chance to hone any skills.
If all those discussions stopped or had big pauses, there would be less dead ends.
I wonder what the reasons are for continuing discussions with trolls:
It feels wrong to leave something one considers dumb or immoral unanswered?
It might allow the troll to think they won the argument since you did not respond?
The last thing they said pissed you off and to not respond would cause some kind of emotional pain?
You have to set off a warning signal in relation to 3rd parties about the idiocy or immorality or poor posting practices of the troll?
Something else?
I don’t think those are good reasons to continue.
For example, the idea that one cannot let things stand or must warn others…
people will figure it out
all these dialogues are not read by many and wither into time
or, that the troll will think they won or you could not counter their last post…
- trolls can manage not to learn or admit anything forever. if this is a concern you will meet by posting, you are married to the troll.
- what a troll thinks probably does not mean much.
…then you are married to Iambiguous and Ecamandu… congratulations buddy. 
I don’t respond to them. I can’t read their posts. Though I really don’t know if I consider Ecmandu a troll. On the other hand I am not sure discussions with him can get anywhere after you understand his positions. I put no energy in getting either of them to understand something. I have no interest in countering what they say and I can’t see what they say.
But hey, anyone getting anything out of any interaction, is obviously free to continue it.
I wonder, sometimes, if it simply feels wrong to leave some insult or ridiculous response standing. Like we feel an internal pressure to correct, show we do not accept their point, can rebut, etc.
I think that urge, while completely understandible, need not be followed through on. Because it is clear that yet another response will come…
and then that one will ‘need’ a response.
Or they might interpret a lack of response as a victory. (I have seen that happen also).
My response is…so what.
Other people’s interpretations and self-congratulatory wanking are not really our purview. And we can’t control them. And if we have decided someone is a troll, then by definition we are not expecting their next response to include a concession, admission, change in approach, sudden respect, consideration, good faith argument and so on.
We EXPECT the next response to be similar to the one we just responded to…and so it too wil require are response’…and then the next…ad infinitum.
And Karpel is a perfect example of why I don’t ignore people. He’s missed my last year of posts. It’s too much of a bother to go through them at this point (I wouldn’t do it), so they are lost to him. He has no fucking clue what I’ve moved towards, not the slightest.
People change Karpel. Going through the muck is worth it. Going through the muck is not ignoring people. How long have I not ignored someone? Let me think… easily over 20 years now. Two decades. I’ll talk to anyone. I actually say this to shame people who are rigid enough to not have that level of curiosity .
For me [of late] it’s not trolls I don’t feed but those for whom I have little or no respect in regard to their intelligence.
Of course that’s even more subjective.
I still read KT however because I do respect his intelligence. And in regard to any number of topics.
And I think that, in some regards, he respects my intelligence too.
Instead, in regard to his own “sense of self” – as that relates to value judgments – he feels as threatened by me as the objectivists.
But why? I think it is because he has somehow managed to convince himself that there does in fact exist a “visceral/intuitive/deep-down-inside-me” Self that allows him to keep a safe distance from my own “fractured and fragmented” “I”.
I threaten that somehow.
But he claims that is not the case.
But he won’t take the components of his own moral philosophy and compare and contrast them with the components of mine in regard to a particular set of circumstances involving conflicting goods.
The moral nihilists are both afraid of me here:
Iambiguous and Karpel.
They’ve built cocoons around themselves with moral nihilism, “the correct way to think”…
Life is much scarier (And exponentially harder - no laziness there) in many respects for someone who has to think morality.
Morality is an almost endless job… slaving away for decades to solve one problem; like like math proofs… it’s blood sweat and tears the whole way. They quit the job, and then sit on what they believe are perches (because they stopped doing philosophic work decades ago) and cast stones about not being able to converse with people because they have no worthy intellect.
Difference between people like Karpel and Iambiguous and I is that I haven’t ‘given up’. Moral nihilism is a set of about 10 sentences that you can repeat forever.
Let’s use math as an example:
Every number can only be discerned from a continuum, so how is any number really a number?
I can say this forever. It’s lazy.
These men are lazy. And while they’re being lazy, people working really hard keep discovering math proofs.
How would you deal with a troll IRL? If they were not at your workplace or God forbid in your nearest family?
Would you maintain the conversation? Would you avoid talkign to them?
What if at gatherings when you criticized them more of the gathering focused on them and their issues and behavior?
But if you did not criticize them, but rather engaged in conversations with other people at the gathers what you consider trolling took up less space at the gathering?
And this cuts all ways. Perhaps someone thinks X is a troll and X experiences a repetitive, boggy non-discussion with them because of this. What’s X’s motivation for engaging eternally? It can’t be philosophy.
Philosophy is exactly what it is. If you can’t handle a troll, just words in a paper, then the magnitude of existence is not for you.
Over the past couple decades of being someone nobody wanted to hear from, I became someone that people want to hear from.
There was no magic potion I swallowed, I just refused to ignore people. On a spirit level it hurts and it hurts a lot … but here I am, a survivor …
If I can make it through, you can too
you just lost again
Case in point.
exactly. blabbering some shit about who has what access to the cosmos. there is no place on earth where this should be taken as anything other than complete bullshit
And your motivation for responding to him which leads him to post more of what you consider shit is…?
he promised to accept a permaban if he lost a debate and he has lost it and i want him to permaban himself
i mean right now the site is like 3 crazy brainwashed trumpers, a kook who blabbers about being in touch with the cosmos, a guy who thinks everyone is an objectivist except him, i mean who could actually look around here and feel as though there was any expectation that they carry on normal discourse or have any kind of serious conversation?
given the current makeup of active members here, seriously, how on earth could anyone who actually wanted to have a conversation about philosophy look at this and decide to stay?
Good point, lol. That said, one can find stuff in the cracks, and…what’s the motivation for engaging with someone who will respond and will repeat or create precisely more of the same?
In a way I am wondering if reduction in response to dead end conversations might make a more philosophical forum. I do think responding to dead end conversation contributes to the deterioration.
People could turn towards posts that offer the best chance of real dialogue and ignore posts that they pretty much KNOW will not lead to it.
Well, there’s that philosophical pimp or gigolo that lived in Alabama once, so there’s that too. [Relocated to Texas?]
I like to think of this site as the philosophy forum of fringe thinkers and crackpots myself, kinda like a cyber tea table of the Mad Hatter in an Alice In Wonderland novel.
Everybody ignores my posts, what gives? 