Closing of the topic "Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny"

[AlexL]

You @EC unexpectedly closed the thread "Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny" and did not provide a reason. 

I was waiting for an important answer from @monart...

Some more transparency would be welcomed...

[monart]

17 hours ago, AlexL said:

You @EC unexpectedly closed the thread "Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny" and did not provide a reason. 

I was waiting for an important answer from @monart...

Some more transparency would be welcomed...

Yes, with all due respect to property rights of this Forum, all due respect should also be shown to positive contributors to this forum. "Objectivism Online" is more than just software and server -- it's also content.

Edited March 3 by monart

[EC]

1 hour ago, monart said:

Yes, with all due respect to property rights of this Forum, all due respect should also be shown to positive contributors to this forum. "Objectivism Online" is more than just software and server -- it's also content.

So answer this simple question and I might reopen it: what is the core purpose in your claim that Covid doesn't exist? And again if my own grandfather had survived the virus/disease that you claim doesn't exist he would have issues with this. I just find it appalling that you are denying the existence of something that took the life of one of my closest family members. 

[AlexL]

11 minutes ago, EC said:

I just find it appalling that you are denying the existence of something that took the life of one of my closest family members. 

OMG, you closed the thread for the wrong reason !☹

[AlexL]

2 hours ago, monart said:

all due respect should also be shown to positive contributors to this forum.

Are you among them? Not in the thread "Remembering the CG Computer-Generated Pandemic Tyranny".

Quote

"Objectivism Online" is more than just software and server -- it's also content.

Then keep this in mind !

[DavidOdden]

OO is supposed to serve a particular purpose, which is not the same as the purpose of Twit-Face or alt.philosophy.objectivism and its spawn HPO, if you remember them. When content deviates from that purpose, it is right for management to take corrective action. My judgment is that adherence to that purpose here is not strict, and it has gotten much looser since I first joined about 20 years ago.

Every person who contributes here should be able to articulate their justification for contributing, to say what value you receive in exchange for your posts. If you can’t do that, you should re-evaluate your self-sacrifice. In fact, very many former contributors have done so (by which I mean, the vast majority). There are loose guidelines which state what the purpose of OO is and what contributors should and should not do. Intellectual honesty is one of those requirements, the problem is that intellectual dishonesty comes in many flavors, one being evasion and the other being unreasoned reliance on authoritative statements. The covid thread reeks of evasion and was worthy of closing on those grounds. I concluded that there was no rational value to be had in the thread, and that put paid to my participation there. I might, in another incarnation, contemplate whether just leaving the thread open does any harm.

There have been many fora for Objectivism, most of which have fallen into complete inactivity. When you peruse the content of other Objectivist fora, ask yourself if you would want to be associated with that group and if not, why not? My judgment is, “No: crappy content” (NB this explicitly does not refer to HBL). The potential harm of crappy content to Objectivism should be obvious, so now we know the basis for closing crappy threads, what remains is a specific evaluation of one or more threads, to decide if they are overall above that crappiness threshold (I will not engage in a specific autopsy here). I would like to avoid reaching the “crappy content” conclusion w.r.t. OO.

[EC]

To me that thread seemed to boil down to a flat earth type of thread where any rational argument or evidence was denied while looking for specific "evidence" from a conspiracy theorist even though it exists in countless forms.  Again, explicitly name the exact reason honestly for the thread. 

[necrovore]

3 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

My judgment is that adherence to that purpose here is not strict, and it has gotten much looser since I first joined about 20 years ago.

It seems like some of the most controversial threads of late have been on point; the main question is always how to discover what the facts are. This can get into questions of what sources you trust, and under what conditions you trust them.

Objectivism obviously reaches different conclusions depending on what facts you put into it; if Objectivism were impervious to facts, it would be arbitrary!

It's proper to reject claims of fact when they clash with lots and lots of well-founded abstractions, though, the way perpetual-motion machines clash with the known laws of physics.

It's also proper to identify situations where a fact really doesn't make any difference, like whether Abraham Lincoln ever dyed his hair.

3 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

Every person who contributes here should be able to articulate their justification for contributing, to say what value you receive in exchange for your posts.

It should be possible to integrate everything without contradiction. So I think part of having an active mind is to read a lot and see if you can integrate what you are reading with what you know. (This includes identification of claims as falsehoods or as arbitrary, where appropriate).

Writing some of your conclusions and seeing how people answer can be valuable and thought-provoking as well.

3 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

I might, in another incarnation, contemplate whether just leaving the thread open does any harm.

My inclination was to think it would not have done any harm. For myself, I figured I had said my piece, and had nothing further to say.

So as far as I was concerned the thread was already dead and it was time for me to move on to some other topic.

I suppose there could be "vampire" threads that could refuse to die and suck the lifeblood out of the rest of the forum... such a thread would need a stake through its heart... but was this thread really one of them?

(Probably the worst thing is unneeded repetition. I don't like reading the same thing over and over, and I don't like saying the same thing over and over, either...)

3 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

There have been many fora for Objectivism, most of which have fallen into complete inactivity.

Often people leave not because of the forum itself but because they have a "life event" such as a new job, a marriage, birth of a child, or a funeral. Life events are why I left and came back, and not because of anything wrong with the board itself. Right now I have time to participate but other times I have just been too busy. If the administrator of a board has such a life event, the board itself may come to an end.

This sort of thing is not the fault of the content.

People can also leave because they are no longer interested in the topic, or because they find the forum "unfriendly." Moderation can help with keeping things on-topic and civilized.

3 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

ask yourself if you would want to be associated with that group and if not, why not? My judgment is, “No: crappy content”

That sounds a lot like "guilt by association."

Lots of, e.g., Metallica fans, don't necessarily like each other.

A forum is not like a magazine where the content can be completely controlled (for quality or anything else). It is proper to remove spam, and stuff that is off-topic could probably also be removed. But you'd know it was off-topic because nobody who is interested in this board in particular would be interested in it.

Edited March 3 by necrovore

[monart]

Open or closed, it matters little, since the record of discussion is there for any independently thinking, unprejudiced reader to learn what's what, who's who, and who said what to whom. Reality is what it is, no matter what some say or believe it is or not.

[EC]

2 hours ago, monart said:

Open or closed, it matters little, since the record of discussion is there for any independently thinking, unprejudiced reader to learn what's what, who's who, and who said what to whom. Reality is what it is, no matter what some say or believe it is or not.

The reason it's closed is because you are arguing against the facts of reality in a prejudiced manner without ever stating the core purpose behind it.  But this isn't the place to have a second flat earth game/discussion.  And yes, your argument and style is exactly the same as those that do the flat earth thing while knowing the truth and just trying to practice argumentation for the sake of argument and arbitrary skepticism contrary to the facts of reality.  Stay in reality because that is what is discussed here.  

[EC]

14 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

OO is supposed to serve a particular purpose, which is not the same as the purpose of Twit-Face or alt.philosophy.objectivism and its spawn HPO, if you remember them. When content deviates from that purpose, it is right for management to take corrective action. My judgment is that adherence to that purpose here is not strict, and it has gotten much looser since I first joined about 20 years ago.

Every person who contributes here should be able to articulate their justification for contributing, to say what value you receive in exchange for your posts. If you can’t do that, you should re-evaluate your self-sacrifice. In fact, very many former contributors have done so (by which I mean, the vast majority). There are loose guidelines which state what the purpose of OO is and what contributors should and should not do. Intellectual honesty is one of those requirements, the problem is that intellectual dishonesty comes in many flavors, one being evasion and the other being unreasoned reliance on authoritative statements. The covid thread reeks of evasion and was worthy of closing on those grounds. I concluded that there was no rational value to be had in the thread, and that put paid to my participation there. I might, in another incarnation, contemplate whether just leaving the thread open does any harm.

There have been many fora for Objectivism, most of which have fallen into complete inactivity. When you peruse the content of other Objectivist fora, ask yourself if you would want to be associated with that group and if not, why not? My judgment is, “No: crappy content” (NB this explicitly does not refer to HBL). The potential harm of crappy content to Objectivism should be obvious, so now we know the basis for closing crappy threads, what remains is a specific evaluation of one or more threads, to decide if they are overall above that crappiness threshold (I will not engage in a specific autopsy here). I would like to avoid reaching the “crappy content” conclusion w.r.t. OO.

Rejoin the moderation group? Not that there's a ton going on here like there used to be because evil is winning in society on a huge scale and people are being both implicitly and explicitly forced away from the good in all forms and being massively "passively" forced to embrace evil/collectivism/statism in every form while shunning and destroying all the good such as Objectivism. 

[Boydstun]

16 hours ago, necrovore said:

. . .

A forum is not like a magazine where the content can be completely controlled (for quality or anything else). . . .

A forum can be run however the owners want to run it. There will be consequences in who wants to participate or read, but that's it. Owners can monitor as little or much as they please. There are forums within Facebook for which each post is monitored and each thread-origination has to be pre-approved. That's fine, and the owners will get satisfaction (or not) from who all participates and what sort of things bloomed in the forum they created. One thing about forums (at least ones of any interest to me) is a circumstance not set by the owners: It is written language. There are choices set by the owners (ultimately) that are firm constraints on participants, such as time limits on editing a post or eliminating your post.

I created, published, and edited the hard-copy journal Objectivity for eight years. My choices of constraints on it were simply my design for it. The options open to the designer are really very wide; there can be many variations of such options while still counting as a journal. Similarly, it goes for a forum such as this one.

Constraints I laid on Objectivity* included: no political or cultural topics or commentaries. No basement or garage science or kook science; only standard science (mostly physics and developmental psychology). No advertisements. Writers had to go through an iterative process with the editor on addressing in the content any pertinent external literature, and there was always a lot, of which the writer knew little at the outset. I did not agree entirely with everything in any compositions not authored by me (and I often came to disagree with things in my own compositions in later years). I was pleased with the quality of the production. It was a worthwhile, challenging project. For my efforts, I prefer these later years to simply write for venues others have set up. I appreciate this one and the intelligence and background training showing here in writings of its participants.

Edited March 4 by Boydstun

[necrovore]

31 minutes ago, Boydstun said:

A forum can be run however the owners want to run it.

If you exercise editorial control, it ceases to be a "forum" at all, and becomes a "magazine" or a "journal." That's my point.

If I write a book I can control everything in the book. But it's not a "forum." It's a book.

[Boydstun]

Yours is only ONE conception of what a forum must be or should be. There is nothing in the technology requiring that model, and any conventions about it were born yesterday and should anyway be rattled with experimentation. Over at Objectivist Living, the owner openly restricted content to: do not criticize Nathaniel or Barbara Branden. In the later years, he had the covert content restriction: do not criticize Donald Trump. It's still a forum. The highly content-restricted forums (FB Groups) named "Ayn Rand Group" and "Leonard Peikoff Appreciation Group" are still forums. An electronic forum could have all the topic-restrictions and scholarly-level requirements I put on the Objectivity journal and it could have management such as the absolute monarchy as I did it there, and it would still be a forum. And it might be a useful forum for some writers and readers because of those considerable restrictions on content. 

The Comments section of online magazines are also forums. In the case of Philosophy Now, the owners have adopted a sufficiently hands-off policy that anything favorable to Ayn Rand or even accurately representing Rand will be met with vicious personal attack on the commenter as ignorant and idiot. The management allows that routine dynamic, and they evidently get the participants and product suited to their project.

Edited March 4 by Boydstun

[necrovore]

1 hour ago, Boydstun said:

A forum can be run however the owners want to run it.

If you exercise editorial control, it ceases to be a "forum" at all, and becomes a "magazine" or a "journal." That's my point.

If I write a book I can control everything in the book. But it's not literally a "forum." It's a book.

(My biggest concern is that no one would read it, which is one reason why I like having access to open forums.)

(Maybe this is more like a continuum than an either-or thing.)

6 hours ago, EC said:

evil is winning in society on a huge scale

I can't find the exact quote, but I believe Rand said somewhere (perhaps in "What Can One Do?") that as long as free speech exists, the right ideas have a chance.

I will agree with @Boydstun that there are a lot of choices as to how to exercise one's free speech. But the thing about a forum is precisely that it does not constitute an exercise of one's own speech -- it constitutes giving others an opportunity to speak, which is a different thing (and can be valuable too, including to the giver of the opportunity).

Of course when you provide that opportunity it's pretty much true by definition that you give up control over what those others are going to say. You are signing up for surprises. Some of them may be pleasant, some not. The pleasant ones are what make it worthwhile.

(But also, a person may run or participate in an open forum because he wants to test his own thinking and ideas by being exposed to those of others.)

Peikoff writes that lies are "impotent" because the underlying reality is still there and will be discovered. This is why people who live by lies end up having to resort to force (because the lies alone are never enough). It's also why a free society can afford to have free speech. So in that sense there shouldn't be any harm in allowing people to speak their minds. (I'm excluding stuff like harassment that would render the forum useless). The truth will come out eventually.

Even posting the truth here isn't necessarily going to end the discussion, though, because people have to see that truth for themselves, and they have to see it in reality, not just in the forum. Discussions end when there is nothing more to add.

My concern is that the calls to exercise more editorial control are actually rooted in the idea that lies are not impotent, that lies have to be censored because they'll "mislead" people.

This is rooted in the primacy of consciousness, but not in the usual way: most people familiar with Objectivism know better than to think that lies "create reality." We all know that I can lie and say I have a gold bar, but the lie doesn't create the gold bar.

But there is a "second order" version of the "primacy of consciousness," if you want to call it that -- the notion that if false ideas spread around, people will believe them, and then act on them, and then this will give rise to oppressive governments and cultures. So well-meaning people then conclude that the spread of the false ideas has to be stopped.

False ideas need to be refuted; that's the only way to really stop them.

The possibility that people will believe bad ideas called "free will" and is metaphysically given, and there's nothing we can actually do about that. We can try to put the right ideas out there, and also try to explain why the wrong ideas are wrong.

Trying to fight the metaphysically given is why it's a second-order version of the primacy of consciousness. We can't stop people from thinking bad thoughts. If refutation is not enough then the human species is doomed anyway.

I think that setting up forum rules to ban the discussion of certain ideas only serves to create the impression that Objectivism cannot withstand those ideas, which is not true. Further, the ideas are not "gone," they just go to other forums. Merely hiding the arguments we disagree with doesn't help; it can even amount to self-deception.

I will admit that sometimes people raise the same tired old objections to Objectivism over and over. In that case it should be sufficient to refer to them to places where the objections have already been answered. However, it is possible that the answer to the tired old objection was somehow incomplete and so another question may need to be answered.

There are also people out there who would expect you to "prove" that 2 + 2 = 4, and they won't accept anything you say, so that they are either trolling or their reasoning is irreparably defective. In that case, just stop. There is nothing you can do. (Why get all upset about it?)

The correct thing to do, the only thing we really can do, about the evil in society, is try to patiently explain why having an oppressive culture is a bad idea, and how to make a better one -- which is sort of what Objectivism is about in the first place.

--

There is a second concern, too. The forum owners may say that they don't want their resources to be used to promote bad ideas.

The thing is, when the forum is open, and somebody posts a bad idea, it doesn't count as a "promotion" in the same way it would if it had been approved by editors. This is because people know that the forum is open and that just about anything can be posted.

If everybody wins an award, the award is not very meaningful, and that's an instance of the same principle.

Edited March 4 by necrovore

[Boydstun]

I'm going to try to make one of those @necrovore. Well, I'll be. It's that easy. I don't have anything to say in this post. Just figuring out how y'all do that.

[monart]

6 hours ago, EC said:

The reason it's closed is because you are arguing against the facts of reality in a prejudiced manner without ever stating the core purpose behind it.  But this isn't the place to have a second flat earth game/discussion.  And yes, your argument and style is exactly the same as those that do the flat earth thing while knowing the truth and just trying to practice argumentation for the sake of argument and arbitrary skepticism contrary to the facts of reality.  Stay in reality because that is what is discussed here.  

You here continue to be a fine satirist of a covid believer, not to forget your amusing parody-confession of having been "secretly recruited to an Army ghost psy-op unit". It was funny for a while, but the joke is getting stale.

[monart]

Related to what happened on the closed topic:

---

Tripping Over the Truth

 

[I paraphrase and expand on a quote ascribed to Winston Churchill: “stumble over the truth”.]

 

Tripping over the truth, on the pathway to somewhere, some people, too busy to give attention, hurry onward.

Some, like a sleepwalker, will yawn and slumber on, unchanged.

Some, embarrassed by the stumble or by the truth, will pretend it didn’t happen.

Some will kick it away, angry at yet another intrusion by reality.

But there are others, curious and caring, who will pause, look, pick it up, and bring it with them -- hopeful, excited by truth’s potential for goodness and beauty.

And some, remembering later that they had tripped and passed over something strange yet attractive, now curious and recognizing a need, return to retrieve it

[tadmjones]

12 minutes ago, monart said:

You here continue to be a fine satirist of a covid believer, not to forget your amusing parody-confession of having been "secretly recruited to an Army ghost psy-op unit". It was funny for a while, but the joke is getting stale.

All the talk of being targeted is a joke/satire? The impression of multiple comments in various threads is that the poster actually believes they are being targeted by mysterious forces bent on personal destruction.

 

Edited March 4 by tadmjones

[EC]

18 minutes ago, monart said:

You here continue to be a fine satirist of a covid believer, not to forget your amusing parody-confession of having been "secretly recruited to an Army ghost psy-op unit". It was funny for a while, but the joke is getting stale.

It is 100% true and at this point you saying this nonsense makes me believe you are in on this. It's not a "parody" nor a "joke". So I'm considering banning you. And to call someone a "believer" in an existent while pretending it's something like a non-existent like a gremlin, unicorn, or a "God" is just ridiculous.  

[AlexL]

2 hours ago, necrovore said:

If you exercise editorial control, it ceases to be a "forum" at all, and becomes a "magazine" or a "journal." That's my point.

A forum is a space for discussions/debates. What you are describing is an unmoderated forum (= zero control over content). The owner defines what, who and how. It is not "pretty much true by definition" that a forum is unmoderated.

2 hours ago, necrovore said:

I will agree with @Boydstun that there are a lot of choices as to how to exercise one's free speech

My understanding is that @Boydstun described various choices as to how to moderate a forum, not choices as to how to exercise one's free speech. One does not have an a priori freedom of speech on a private forum. It is implicit in the attributes of private property. The non-owners are guest and are subjected to the rules of the house.

2 hours ago, necrovore said:

So in that sense there shouldn't be any harm in allowing people to speak their minds [...] setting up forum rules to ban the discussion of certain ideas only serves to create the impression that Objectivism cannot withstand those ideas

Harmed is that owner who does not want his property to be used in ways he does not desire, for example to spread ideas he hates.

Edited March 4 by AlexL
form --> forum

[EC]

50 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

All the talk of being targeted is a joke/satire? The impression of multiple comments in various threads is that the poster actually believes they are being targeted by mysterious forces bent on personal destruction.

 

It's not. It is the truth, and I'm a target of collectivist, mysticism/religious, statist/fascist/socialist/authoritarian evil that has overtaken this country on a level that should have been impossible while everyone pretends that they aren't involved, it's not happening,  or weird/ false comments like Monart made.  And, of course,  as I was typing this on my new,  but also hacked by these evil criminals, phone,  I had a blinking emoji pop up for the last sentence,  an eyeroll emoji and a looking down "sad" emoji pop up. I should be screenshotting all these crimes. 

[necrovore]

1 hour ago, AlexL said:

A forum is a space for discussions/debates. What you are describing is an unmoderated forum (= zero control over content). The owner defines what, who and how. It is not "pretty much true by definition" that a form is unmoderated.

No, that's not true -- an unmoderated forum would allow spam and harassment and the like. What I propose is an open forum, where any ideas can be discussed.

There's a similar difference between an anarchy and a free country.

It should be sufficient to require that the ideas have something to do with Objectivism.

1 hour ago, AlexL said:

Harmed is that owner who does not want his property to be used in ways he does not desire, for example to spread ideas he hates.

I am not proposing to initiate force against anyone.

But I am also not proposing to have people banned from the board because I disagree with them.

Edited March 4 by necrovore

[DavidOdden]

I have a general question about Objectivism, of the type “how does one use Objectivism as a tool for living?”. As I understand Objectivism, it is a central premise that man’s proper means of survival is reason, which is reducing knowledge to observation, forming concepts from measurable relationships among concretes then integrating this knowledge by logical rules into propositions. I observed that numerous Objectivist fora have died, subsequently it turns out that there is an apparently-significant distinction between “forum” and “magazine”, a crucial differentiating property being “control”, where exercising editorial control makes a venue not be a forum, instead it is a magazine /journal.

So my question is, how should one determine the proper meaning of “magazine” and “forum”? Obvious it would be based on observation, but what are we to observe, and what are we to measure in distinguishing these concepts? My own use of the term was based on a specific type of technology distinguishing a “forum” from a blog, a chat channel, a mailing list, a WhatsApp group, and other means of propagation, distinguished by hierarchical structure and permanence, however, that is not the ancient etymological meaning (a forum was simply an outdoor meeting place). I don’t assume that ancient etymologies dictate contemporary word meaning in English. Magazines and journals do not typically have multi-level recursive topical structure and they do have quantal structure (an “issue” with fixed content). If it is true that by nature there cannot be content-control in a forum, then there are no fora of any type anywhere (this is a factual claim, which can be refuted by pointing to a venue that purports to be a forum and has the essential characteristic of permanence but which does not impose any controls on content), and OO is also not a journal or magazine, so what is it? This is a basic issue in epistemology: people make claims, how can we ever evaluate the truth of those claims (that was the core flaw of the covid thread: objective judgment of truth is impossible if one cannot objectively identify concepts and propositions, and distinguish what is true from what is false).

I pointed to the OO guidelines above, the question at hand now is whether the guidelines are dysfunctional and should be revised, or are they correct; and then, have they been followed or violated? A property-rights response would be pointless, in that it does not violate David’s property rights to discuss this issue. If you find the guidelines to be in error and can point to a good reason for changing A into B, then I expect that David would be open to such reasoning.

To the extent that some may think that the underlying issue is content, I disagree, I hold that it is about methods. Frankly, the emoji-response option is a terrible feature of the software, especially the lulz-icon which is just plain rude. If you disagree with something that someone posts, you should explain the rational basis of that disagreement and not just dismiss the statement as being laughable.

I do think that there is a flaw in the guidelines, that an important section is given low prominence:

The forum (acting through its owner, admins, or moderators) reserves the right to modify or delete any material that violates any of these forum rules, or for any other reason that they deem appropriate. For example, the moderators may split, merge, close, or delete questions or threads. Posts with frequent misspellings or grammatical errors may be deleted at the moderator's discretion. They also reserve the right to ban any user if they are in violation of the board's rules, although warnings will generally be given first (especially concerning the more innocent mistakes). Egregious violations of rules may result in a banning without warning.

 

Also, this bit probably needs some re-wording:

 

Do not post complaints about the behavior of any member on the forum - report them to the moderators. Public complaints about other members will be treated as a personal attack and may be deleted!

If you think someone deserves a warning, please use the "Report!" link found on every post. The offender will not know who reported him.

I do not think that this thread is in violation of that guideline, yet I do think that we are skirting around the edges of a personal attack (on more than one party). Should personal attacks be prohibited, and if so, what constitutes a personal attack? How should we effectively communicate the distinction between disagreement and a personal attack?

[EC]

 

Also, it was this and I got a text to go to the recruiter but they wanted a certain number which I asked about and they said it was essentially a number assigned to members of the military or I suppose veterans that I of course have never possessed. Basically, the recruitment was though one of Skinwalker Ranch's Discord channels that I volunteered to become part of the tech team for after spotting many UAP and other anomalies via their private YouTube live stream.  Everything I caught on video was witnessed by many others, recorded,  and put into the official record. That I found so much so quickly along with the physics I provided and things like the entity in the ridge is an advanced AGI were what lead to all of this.