The Testing Chat III: The Time of Great Chatting

[Flagg]

http://kotaku.com/this-is-one-monster-phallus-476413043

Cock.

[RogueIce]

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 2&t=158383

This is like the most efficient troll ever. breaking boards rules and being sorta racist in less than a dozen words.

My thought on seeing that thread title: "I hope Michelle is in it, not Barack. "

Is that wrong of me?

If N&P calcifed anything it was the attitude that things should be taken seriously, and that there were ABSOLUTE TRUTHS.

There aren't?

Only Sith deal in absolutes.

[Flagg]

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 2&t=158383

This is like the most efficient troll ever. breaking boards rules and being sorta racist in less than a dozen words.

My thought on seeing that thread title: "I hope Michelle is in it, not Barack. "

Is that wrong of me?

If N&P calcifed anything it was the attitude that things should be taken seriously, and that there were ABSOLUTE TRUTHS.

There aren't?

Only Sith deal in absolutes.

That statement is an absolute, therefore you are a Sith.

[RogueIce]

But it was said by a Jedi!

Curse you canonical infallibility!

[adr]

so i have boring work to do but it is boring so i don't want to do it

on the other hand i really should so i'm not cracking open my new books cuz if i do i'll never do the boring work

rather than do either i'm just kinda sitting here. GOLDEN MEAN

[Flagg]

But it was said by a Jedi!

Curse you canonical infallibility!

Obi Wan says lots of dumb shit.

"Who is the greater fool, the fool or the one that follows him?"

Yeah, that would be the fool who doesn't punt the limbless torso cursing your name into the lava and saving the galaxy a giant fucking headache.

[Bakustra]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Existentialism

So we've been reduced to asking "why" recursively, like toddlers.

that's not actually the case.

existentialism merely states that meaning must be constructed by the human individual, liberating us from the infinite recursion of "why"

[RyanThunder]

I don't really see how that could be the case.

[Zod]

I don't really see how that could be the case.

Isn't that just a much wordier way to say "why"?

[RyanThunder]

Why do you say that?

[Bakustra]

I don't really see how that could be the case.

Take a utilitarian philosophy built around the harm principle. Why is harm bad? We can ask this question infinitely many times because of limits on our ability to effectively empathize- we cannot experience the harm that other beings experience. So in the end, we can only answer it one of four ways- by stopping at a certain point (eg "harm is bad because other beings appear to react poorly to it"), by redefining things into case-by-case, by answering "because", which is no answer at all, or by concluding that harm is bad because we, ourselves, find harm to be bad. That is, without acknowledging our own role in the process of moral thought and behavior, we cannot come to any useful conclusions.

Similarly, we could talk about deontological philosophy, or virtue ethicism in the same ways- the rules are beneficial because we find them convincing, the virtues are virtuous because we believe them to be so. Then, of course, we can ask questions about why we find these things convincing, and start to think about thinking, but without the prior revelation, we cannot move on from there. Of course, we may well find that infinite recursions await us in the depths of our personalities, but those are a different matter entirely.

[RyanThunder]

But then everything is just opinions. It becomes trivial for somebody to say "murder is righteous" and anything to the contrary is "just your opinion, man".

How can you morally maintain order in such a setting?

[Zod]

But then everything is just opinions. It becomes trivial for somebody to say "murder is righteous" and anything to the contrary is "just your opinion, man".

How can you morally maintain order in such a setting?

So what's your opinion on slavery?

Would it be morally acceptable for a slave to murder their owner in order to escape? If it is then how does that fit into your absolutist values?

[Glass Fort MacLeod]

in theory if you do it with socratic irony it as least can help people to recognize the faults of their thinking, but beyond a certain point actively engaging reduces any potential humor- when you're deliberately trying to piss people off, it's not as funny when it works as when they say ridiculous things straight off the bat, which is why that dragon-furry-thing thread had its funniest posts in the first couple pages when people were talking about how they would subordinate their sexual behavior to the hypothetical needs of some dragon society, because the insanity was unprovoked

That I can understand, but in my experience people 'learn' better when you arne't yelling at them or beating them over the head. Vs debates taught me that looking down on people only encourages them to react with hostility to you (CF trekkies vs Warsies, again Stofsk could provide some insights here, or Stark when it came to dealing with the 'MECHS SUCK' crowd at SDN.) I used to be all 'fire and brimstone' in my posts, hurling insults when someone disagreed with me or challeneged me at the drop of a hat but.. it was unproductive. stressful (contrary to appearances, I don't LIKE being angry at people, because it just becomes prolonged yelling and it kicks in my manic phase of stress.), and generally promoted ill feelings. To put it another way, I tried to be 'like Mike' in that way and it failed miserably, because I'm NOT Mike.

However, being 'patient and understanding' and trying to educate by example can be incredibly frustrating, especially if someone is dense or intransigent, and if you don't have the patience of a saint, the temptation to grab their head and slam it into the wall saying 'WHY AREN'T YOU GETTING THIS YOU FUCKING MORON' grows.

That said I'm not sure there are many people here that NEED such education.. I think its very much 'preaching to the choir'.. so then I have to wonder what the point is? Gandalf had a point in the HPCA thread I could empathize with entirely. In my own personal view, I grew tired of VS debates for much the reason he tired of HPCA... being exposed to that sort of shit, day in and day out, can be emotionally exhausting and depressing, because you're trying to understand someone who is unliekly to change, and who is encsconced in their own personal little world and refusing to look beyond it. And exposure to that makes you wonder if you're destined to become like that.

I mean if its just for 'personal reasons and it makes me feel good' thats fine.. but it could become a problem if people actually THINK they're better than others because well... they have the right mindsets and shit. That's one of the problesm I've encountered with small boards in the past (like B5tech, althoudgh compared to a place like SB, SDN can be a 'small' board too.. esp in its current state) groupthink can come about very easily.

Partly it may just be that as far as this board goes and SDN, I've been on 'both sides' of the situation so to speak, I've been mocked by peopel here for who I am, and yet I'm also (now) accepted for who I am, and I consider that a bit peculiar because while I have changed, I haven't changed THAT much.

of course, i only advocate trolling when the person is question is a massive asshole and you can let off steam by messing with them a little bit. in any case, trolling eventually develops into meta-trolling where everything you do becomes suspect and carefully assumed to be ironic or sarcastic in some fashion, which renders things unworkable for people who want to post sincerely and diminishes any impact, so yeah.

Well thats how it should work. I mean thats what the 'mockery of stupid people' was supposed to be in theory and why 'miss manners' was frowned on. you deal with stressful people or dishonest people, you want to be able to express that. But that's pretty much open to abuse because not everyone is going to agree what qualifies as 'dishonest' or 'asshole' or whatever. Despite being a scientific and logical board, SDN could rarely agree what encompassed those qualifications (And thus deserving of the trolling), and you ended up having lots of people yeling at each other for having a difference of opinion. Small wonder the board falls apart.

Anything that involves conflict, or venting/trolling of that manner has to be handled carefully, becuase its human nature to be tribal and dogmatic (at least most people *I* am exposed to seem prone to it, and I know I was for the longest time) and it takes time and effort to learn behavioural patterns other than that.

[adr]

if life seems jolly rotten, there's something you've forgotten

and that's to laugh and smile and dance and sing

[Bakustra]

But then everything is just opinions. It becomes trivial for somebody to say "murder is righteous" and anything to the contrary is "just your opinion, man".

How can you morally maintain order in such a setting?

Nothing stops this from happening now. There is actually no means by which a belief in moral absolutes acts to stop people from coming to this conclusion. So how can you maintain order in a moral way? You decide what to do according to your beliefs, and act as necessary. If I were in such a situation, I hope that I would have the courage to act in order to stop such a person from killing anybody, and I believe that a lot of people also believe that murder is wrong and so would act in order to stop such a person from killing and this is really how societies work. That's what "consent of the governed" means- the people have decided to put the responsibility for acting in this manner in the hands of a particular group of persons, who generally delegate it onto others.

*snip*

Honestly, I just quote stuff from HPCA because I find it kinda funny. I mean, it's sick of me, but I crack up every time I envision an angry old man yelling about how he's gonna hang all the "Traitor Left", probably from a rocking chair. I had kindly great-grandparents and my grandparents are pretty nice too so I've been angry-senior-citizen deprived, I think.

And a lot of it is recognizing you as a person beyond "guy who writes about 40k", and recognizing you're a chill dude of some kind.

[The Spartan]

Life's a piece of shit, when you look at it.

Life's a laugh! And death's a joke, it's true...

[Jung]

Nothing stops this from happening now. There is actually no means by which a belief in moral absolutes acts to stop people from coming to this conclusion. So how can you maintain order in a moral way?

I think the fear of moral nihilism may be overblown generally

I have a pet theory that a society's moral is generally derived from social instincts + economic and power relations

On the one hand this means amorality will not be embraced by the masses because it goes against social instincts; most people are moral for reasons that are fundamentally emotional, not rational.
On the other hand it means society's idea of morality drifts according to changes in economic and power relations and ostensibly absolute morality is largely impotent to prevent this; an ostensible absolute morality out of synch with social structure faces either rejection, reinterpretation, or irrelevance via hypocrisy.

[RyanThunder]

I suppose the genie's out of the bottle at this point, but if you never told them anything else they might be less prone to coming to such conclusions, being of clearly low intelligence already.

EDIT: moral absolutes that is.

[adr]

Life's a piece of shit, when you look at it.

i love that line

[The Spartan]

Just remember that the last laugh is on you!

And...

[Gands]

I have graduated!

The graduation ceremony was awesome. A high point was the university's a capella group performing Toto's Africa.

Afterwards I ran into my year 10 history teacher, who was getting a PhD. He was so insanely proud of me, and said he'd have the modhist department "look after me". When I bumped into professors, they all were asking how my masters is going, and what my thesis would be. I also got invited to a book launch as a guest if the author.

[Phantasee]

Congrats, Gands!

[timmy]

Great news! It's all coming up Gands!

[weemadando]

Great news Gands.