what IS really silly is with all the worse problems in the world and this site and some members are up in arms over ufo's and paranormal videos/pics.
Consider a market dynamic. If nobody wishes to stand up in the middle of all this and advocate irrationality, then nobody else will have that aspect to focus on, respond to, or make such decisions about.
So let us, then, revisit the point:
Look at how much of what passes for conservatism at Sciforums over the years really does have to do with supremacism. So if, for instance, the policy results in a lack of ufo enthusiasts, is it that we're actually forbidding ufology, or that nobody can manage to discuss it without preaching conspiracism? And if the policy results in a lack of supremacism in general, how is that a bad thing?
(#9↑
Sadly, Sciforums has a particular polcy prejudice evident over the years; it can become relevant if we wish, and it eventually will, or we can pretend to ignore it for a moment, since everyone else already is.
Thus, if I have three Christians who show up at Sciforums, at what point do we expect any sort of integrity? I dropped a line about Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA18), that calling out his adultery is oppressing his rights as a Christian, and the point of that is to illustrate the problem. If people wish to invoke a label and demand consequence, such labels ought not be arbitrary. Clearly, we're
not including in his identity as Christian some obscure right to adultery. And to what degree, for our purposes, does religion license what? To what degree does any label license what? If an argument is fallacious, then an argument is fallacious, and no alt-label will change that. Appealing to Christianity or patriotism or whatever else won't change it. If the peepee tape rumor proves true, Donald Trump will obviously try some manner of complaint about how he is the victim, but one thing he will not be able to say is that someone has violated his rights as a Christian. That is to say, whether you're Donald Trump, who appears to merely swindle Christians, Tim Murphy, who apparently cannot reconcile his Christianity to his humanity, or Josh Duggar, who has the appearance of being a dangerously predatory pervert, it will be a dubious prospect to assert Christianity as a shield against criticism for adultery. (I wonder how it works as defense for identity theft?)
But, honestly, if these hypothetical Christians were of such disposition as to post literal rape advocacy, white supremacism, and genocide, their so-called "Christianity" would not be the reason they were thrown out.
The same thing with ufology. Look, if the point is just to preach personal opinions and make fallacious demands without regard to reality, so be it.
That you wish to have a different discussion entirely is what it is, but having you make shit up in order to distract from other issues is actually the sort of problematic that leaves other people expecting that they will bother caring about whatever it is you're on about sometime in the future when it feels relevant to them.
We're now having a more detailed discussion of ufology because
you wanted it. So, you know, I'm going to skip out on the word silly and assert that what is really stupid is that with all the worse problems in the world and this site,
this is what
you want us to be wasting our time on.
But you're also right about one thing. I'm sorry about saying "misanthropy"; I think back on all those posts you've written about what's wrong with people and the hopelessness of the world, and I now recognize that it was my mistake to find misanthropy by taking those posts at face value; what I should have done was be like so much of the world that I actually don't like and tell you to stop your goddamn selfish whining. Or, more directly, yeah, there are a lot of people here and elsewhere that
get the point that the world is kind of a sucky place as we humans have made it, and
yes, we get that it is perfectly human for such feelings to permeate one's expression, so in the moment we might ask you to transcend that perpetual patina sufficiently to pick a useful direction for that impetus.
(When it comes to that exasperated sense of what the fuck is wrong with people in this fucked up fuckity-fuck world, I and many others sympathize; as to the moment, no, it's not so much a lack of fucking decorum. I mean, please, for fuck-all sake, I thought we were all pretty clear about the tacit point that, generally speaking, basic fucking lack of decorum is not something I get to complain about very much. However, the lack of decorum, as such, should you or I or anyone else choose to so construe, that I might protest or disdain shows sullen presumption and projection from ignorance. And in terms of that sense of why other people are so fucked up, and that sense of what the holy living fuck is going on around here, yes, you'll find plenty of people on that page with you; but the part about uninformed projection for the sake of feeling better about yourself, not everyone can follow you there.)
We're talking about general behavior as relates to subject matter; you're on about personal issues. There's only so much the rest of us can get from that, since the primary value is self-directed.
But that's the thing; sometimes members just commit themselves to a course, and, you know, it's their own choice to follow that course or try something different.
And we can try saying the same about the staff in the larger question except it's not quite true except
now it kind of is, or something approximately like that. Or maybe it always was, but there are enough disagreements about history that there isn't much left for fact about how we got here other than in the question of what it means to pursue some manner of a science site while guarding in order to be fair without any real definition of that fairness we have arrived at a point where there just isn't much left to discuss owing to the number of special accommodations we need to make in order to create a safe space for fallacy.
Remember, also, that Sciforums started out as Exosci, intending to discuss issues large and small within the realm of science and the science of things not yet known, like the final answers of cosmology including questions of deity. The whole idea, inasmuch as there ever was any other than trying to make an interesting website for a university computer science program, was to discuss and transcend base preaching. It's hard to explain, today, so I'll paraphrase my brother. We both come from a time when the adoption of email at work was no sweat because we were waiting on that kind of technology, but the rise of the internet in '95-96 had him
giddy, looking forward to a new era of arts and letters. It didn't quite work out that way, but we all learned a great deal about human nature, market dynamics, and behavioral economics—which just won a Nobel prize, for whatever that's worth to anyone—as communicative standards plummeted and workplaces scrambled to avoid actual style sheets while pleading with employees to not use netspeak shorthand in official company communication.
So, yeah, as pretentious as it sounds, the new sophistry a lot of people were expecting—and arguably never really arrived—has something to do with the origins of Sciforums.
To the other, the atheistic supremacism of those old days is almost embarrassing to recall. We ... I mean, I suppose the bit a few years ago when someone tried to redefine religion in order to facilitate the critique isn't surprising, or at least shouldn't be, in its context; we've had a mean streak of that around here almost from the outset. Talk about the triumph of the rational; it was quite easy to vanquish the dusty, socially retarded Christian evangelism evolving the way of the dodo during the transitional years between, say, IE and Netscape, to the one, and, for Americans, 9/11 at the other end. No, really, it was Samhain; we
harvested bad theology as if for sport. Not only was it
fun, but some of us learned a
lot.
Meanwhile there is always a point to be had about some people deciding to venture down to Fringe for a lark, but we also come back to an obvious point, which is that there is more data than any one person in particular sees. And, in the end, whether this moderator deals with this science-ish poseur on a lark, or that fringer boasts to a moderator that it's all intentional bullshit, is something those moderators have to deal with, your projections don't change, and in the end have little to do with the problem of applying the scientific method "when it just can't apply to speculative ideas and where all variables and facts are unknown"
(#11↑). Once again, you summarize the problem.
Yes, the Fringe subfora exist as a place to put such subject matter in order to keep it from mucking up scientific discourse. Just like the Cesspool originated as a place to dump stuff out of circulation without destroying or mangling the historical record.
But that doesn't mean preaching and baiting and dumbing down. I personally don't believe responsible discussion of the fortean is either impossible or doomed to self-superior curmudgeonist litanies lacking any useful imagination. To the other, kind of like I don't believe religious and theological discourse is inherently limited to utterly moronic evangelism, there are corners of the marketplace I learned to generally stay away from a long time ago. The problem isn't that such topics are somehow forbidden, but come on—
really?—is that the best the marketplace has to offer?
