Do you remember, several years ago, (Q), arguing to define religion as mere belief in God? The same stupid standards by which you got to tromp about in uneducated, antireligious bigotry persist to promote Vociferous' manner of ignorance and bad behavior.
The underlying problem is that some "political views", such as we might describe them, are really hard to advocate in any responsible manner, so we're now expected to pander to those as if those advocates were vulnerable, subject people. I mean, you've been around long enough to remember when we described this place, in the browser title, even, as, "Intelligent Community"; that motto went away precisely in order to accommodate irrational prejudice and indefensible politics. The idea, apparently, was that if you didn't let people lie through their teeth in order to disrupt any discussion under the sun, you are somehow stifling political views. I used to joke that free speech doesn't mean the words have no value; around here, I've clearly lost that argument.
But, yes, it's not entirely unlike when you needed to falsely simplify the definition of religion in order to make your argument. When people have to put aside actual intelligent discussion in order to accommodate such particular needs, those subjects and lost discussions aren't counted among the tragically silenced. That is, worry about silencing political views isn't universal, but applied to an unenumerated range of subjects apparently according to personal sentiment.
Much like this. As I understand it, if we try to oblige Vociferous to start making sense, site administration considers that a silencing of political views.
Think about it, though. From "intelligent community", to this. In order to protect unenumerated political views, Sciforums has come to prefer make-believe to actual facts and evidence. And since actually intelligent people tire of perpetually catering to immature insincerity, very few have stuck around over the years. In the name of free speech, we chased away the intelligent community.
Thank you for your contribution.
These years later, though, yeah, this is what it comes to. Get used to it.
When it comes to what our neighbor actually believes, it doesn't actually matter, because we apparently set aside any pretense of intelligent community, obligation to good faith, and our alleged longstanding respect for the scientific method; what you see around here is the result. Some potshered says something stupid, occasionally even pushing to insult, and a bunch of people crash on the behavior, and then we do it all over again.
I would love to say there's a simple explanation, but that also depends on the audience. The whipping-boy attitude about it all was actually intended to accommodate people like you. This sort of easy rhythm, barely lifting a finger to crash on whoever wants to humiliate themselves in the moment, is its actual purpose.
Still, in Vociferous' case, reasonable attendance of his arguments will communicate a reservation of beliefs; we might, over time, collect enough data points to describe the shape of what is withheld, but most of what he does is make weird rhetorical demands from a position of apparent blithering ignorance.
Forum rules? As far as forum rules are concerned, you're pandering to an audience of one, standards of rational discourse are in and of themselves anathema, and good faith is apparently some manner of political view that must necessarily be guarded against like an enemy. If you have the correct political outlook, the administration will throw down hard on your behalf, even making believe in order to ensure you can advocate crimes without having to put too much effort into it. Seriously: Some things are hard to argue rationally, but if those needs fall within a particular range corresponding to sentiment, sure, we'll apparently even redefine words for you.
Don't bother appealing to the forum rules, like that. I mean, sure, staff will occasionally invoke the rules, in some way, when they feel moved to act, but the forum rules were somehow problematic, and instead of changing them to say what whoever really wants them to say, we've left them in place and not so much abandoned them as turned against them. And the joke is that it's over five years later, and we've never found out what these mysterious, endangered "political views" we're supposed to fret for actually are. (
Spoiler alert: With enough data points, the shape of what is absent can sufficiently resolve.)
The way of things around here is actually intended to your benefit, among others, and performances like our neighbor puts on are apparent symptoms the rest of us are intended to endure along the way, the price of attending the former Intelligent Community.
Beyond that, the explanation becomes a complicated mess orbiting strangely particular priorities. There isn't really any pretty description.
A lot changed while you were away, except not really.
In dealing with Vociferous, try this approximate model: Someone who twitches with what appears to be a strange envy moving him to constantly overstate himself in search of quick-fix emotional gratification, but doesn't seem to have the chops to stand the line. His behavior is what it is, so that model will eventually fail; or, at least, I would hope it eventually fails, as such blithe summaries really ought to be inherently flawed just as a principle of the Universe. But that's the thing. I razz him, frequently, about a litany of puffery that just never works out for him. Like misusing fallacy names; or botching basic distinctions such as the law itself compared to means of enforcement, or the difference between commentary and reportage; and at one point he even getting snotty about the custom of s-apostrophe as singular possessive, and got it precisely wrong. The
present example↑, about, "ignorant foreigners", who, "insist on proving their ignorance by opining on things of which they demonstrable have no clue", seems nearly reflective of heat he's taken on a regular basis for opining in such a manner as to demonstrate his own cluelessness.
He's been that way pretty much the whole time. Often, you'll find yourself wondering where to start. It's kind of like,
「Can you tell me where it hurts?」 and the answer is, apparently, "Uranus". At that point, there is very little anyone can do to help, aside from holler when the probe is ready to go, and even then, it's a long journey before we can even begin analyzing data toward our answer. Nor, in this illustration, is it clear that he understands the double entendre; rather, someone, somewhere in his life, said something funny about Uranus and now he can't help himself.
And, yeah, if that is enough to rile you to the edge of decorum, well, this is Sciforums, where my constant reminding Vociferous about his clownish errors apparently doesn't count as criticism.
No, really, somebody actually said that, recently, complaining,
"Why do you spend your time criticising me instead?" after wagging that nobody prevents me from engaging with Vociferous on my own terms. And, really, at that point, what does one do with such alternate realities?
It's the Sciforums adventure, a lot like you left it, only more so.
Welcome home, (Q).
