Moderator: SC Moderators
Well I must admit that I have yet to read the long transcript posted above, but I hope to get around to it soon.
I would just like to ask Beathan, or any other experts on the subject, what you call it when someone continually attacks the supposed "logical fallacies" of their opponents, instead of dealing with the substance of the debate?
ok well....I dont even know what a internet troll is...............and backatcha Danton you have been quite mean to me in IM .. OH>> but we wont talk about that,cos that would be wrong.................... same to Jon and Pat,...........if anyone recalls in the first RA session i was in ever in ... before I even knew who he was, Pat was IMing me nasty things as were other CSDF members.. and I cut and pasted them to open which prompted a public apology. IT is all on the forum....That was MY welcome to the RA.... of course that is now conveniently forgotten.
I am guilty of the crime of being eager and excited about CDS and sometimes I talk too much and out of turn. For that please forgive me. I donate a lot of time energy and money to our community. shame on me
so anyway, As the CSD's own SL actress/politician, (note the location) I would like to say thank you very much for the publicity! I knew one day my fame would rise to the level of Tabloid Magazine infamy and gossip.
I am sorry I cannot join the ad hominem group.. becasue when things like this happen to me :
1. I give Pat a bill three times before he says he got it and in the weeks between a similar CSDF bill to what he got from me is on the agenda...
2. I ask Pat before a meeting if i can say a brief word on a topic during a meeting and he tells me no its after thursday at noon.. so I call for it as the constitution allows me .. asking for a vote of the RA to add an item to an agenda fro the following week. And three weeks in a row he refuses to even let me do that.. my constitutional right..........thwarted and then he calls me names.
3. Beg to have any other business added to the agenda and put them on approprately and are told no because someone might take over the meeting if they can have an opportunity to speak with out a topic preapproved.... or some thing like that.
well, ........if he or anyone else treats me like that...........(i throw my ciggy in the air) I might just call them poo poo heads!
so, look at the big picture my fellow citizens.and the MO of the majority faction.
btw, i do SELL trolls that emit butterflys in my flower shop and would gladly give a discount to CDS citizens.
Jon Seattle wrote:Cindy Ecksol wrote:It's also a violation of the Terms of Service, as Jon has posted an out-of-context and edited transcript rather than the entire in-context conversation. I've asked him to remedy the problem, and hope I won't have to take further action.
Well, Cindy I don't log in every hour to see what messages are posted, I often go several days. However, the transcript clearly shows that even though you changed your tactic after it was clear that I was not going along with it, the conversation was in context.
Thanks for trying, Jon. Please remove BOTH of these transcripts until you can get permission from the others to post their names and comments. This is better, but still not completely in context. There are also some missing IM comments from the two mystery individuals that you included in a notecard of the first part of our conversation that you gave to me at that meeting and that are extremely relevant to the context of the conversation. And now that you know I'm paying attention, I expect that you will too and will be able to remedy the problem by noon SLT today.
Jon Seattle wrote:You and others aimed at discrediting Pat and doing this by circulating with organized private conversations. This, of course, helped to keep these actions in private. The fact is, running a whisper campaign to tell people that Pat's actions look paranoid and drive a wedge between Pat and his faction was among the worst, most immoral, political actions I have ever seen in the CDS.
The point is it was not, and is not, Princess acting on her own, but the actions of a group. I would note, promising to not use ad-hominem attacks at this point, after Pat and others have been hounded out of the RA for opposing your faction's initiative, and other dedicated individuals are also under coordinated attack, is all very convenient.
Let me say very clearly that my visit to you (and my visit to the CSDF meeting) had nothing to do with ThePrincess or anyone else. Nor did it really have anything to do with Pat: it was about you. The conversation about Pat was incidental. Although I did have in mind to sit down with him one-on-one also, the need for that meeting became moot when he resigned and so never took place.
If you were REALLY being honest, you'd also post the entire transcript of our FIRST conversation, a meeting that also took place at my request. Both times I came to see you on my own initiative because I honestly didn't believe (and still don't) that you and I ought to be so seriously at odds about the issues being discussed in CDS at the time. Pointed banter on the forum is fun enough, but when it gets to feeling nasty and the nastiness interferes with the ability for the community to explore the REAL issues, there's something wrong. The best way I know to resolve issues like that is to have a private talk with those who seem to be striving to create the rift. Naive, maybe. But part of a plot? Definitely not.
Cindy
theprincessparisi wrote:ok well....I dont even know what a internet troll is...............
For those who are wondering exactly what a troll is, here's the basic definition, courtesy of http://eeng.net/CS/blogs/smileycoyote/a ... 6/930.aspx
"What is a troll?
An Internet "troll" is a person who delights in sowing discord on the Internet. He tries to start arguments, and upsets people."
Of course you can substitute "in the CDS forums" for "on the Internet" and we'll have a better context for exactly what we're discussing here and who fits the description of one who STARTS arguments with the intent to disrupt. I encourage reading of the rest of that page as it also includes strategies for dealing with trolls.
**EDIT** As long as we're on the subject, you all might appreciate http://redwing.hutman.net/%7Emreed/ I'm sure we have most of these characters wandering around CDS...
Cindy
Danton --
The point is that when an argument is fallacious, it is lacking in proper substance. It is irrelevant or contains problematic ambiguities. Thus, it is impossible to address the substance of a fallacious argument.
What is the substance? We have personality conflicts. You want the people involved to respond by taking sides, breaking off into gangs, and then gang up on the people arguably most at fault. The theory (not a bad one) is that the worst of the participants will be the people most ganged up on.
I have a serious problem with this. First, I think that such gang fighting is inherently disruptive and harmful. If there is an alternative to such anarchistic reactions, we should do it. I think that process is a better alternative. I further think that the problem is disappearing (or at least being circumscribed and corralled) as a result of our process improvements. I think this would have been the case if Pat and the CSDF had stayed, as well -- making their noisy withdrawal pointless.
So you and I disagree. You believe in gangs; I believe in law. That is what I meant when I said that I thought that the action you seek would be a counterproductive and unnecessary escalation of the conflict. I want to disarm the situation, not explode it in the hope that the "right" people would be the only casualties.
Beathan
Beathan -
I believe in rule of law as much as you do. When I complain about the gang that I see forming around ThePrincess, my complaint has precisely to do with my perception that her hostile and aggressive speech is outside of the bounds of what we should consider acceptable in a well-monitored discussion.
I would like to state however that I think law is often made by the strong to defend the interests of the strong. Even in a representative democracy, numerous factors act to pervert the democratic process, and to reduce the level of representation afforded to poorer and weaker sections of the population. Thus the social systems and the laws that support them often act to perpuate inequality, powerlessness and poverty. Sometimes the weak and the oppressed react in spontaneous revolts, such as in urban riots, but it is obvious that such revolts fail to provide those revolting with any increase in political power. The only sure way for them to improve their situation is to learn to participate in the democratic process, and to obtain social changes through legal channels. Do we really disagree that much, you and I?
- Danton
This "Catalogue of Abuse" seems to be descending toward some ugly lowest common denominator. The only question is who will win this race to the bottom. Every small community has it's "enfante' terribles" who seek to dominate the public process through over-the-top behavior. Having grown up in small communities, I have seen this pattern oft repeated. The best long term strategy seems to be to extinguish the behavior by discounting it, by not being provoked by it. Those of us who are parents understand that long term this method is more effective than spanking (besides, I suspect that some of our offenders have role playing sessions in such things, and spanking gives them a thrill) 
bjerkeleerie wrote:This "Catalogue of Abuse" seems to be descending toward some ugly lowest common denominator. The only question is who will win this race to the bottom. Every small community has it's "enfante' terribles" who seek to dominate the public process through over-the-top behavior. Having grown up in small communities, I have seen this pattern oft repeated. The best long term strategy seems to be to extinguish the behavior by discounting it, by not being provoked by it. Those of us who are parents understand that long term this method is more effective than spanking (besides, I suspect that some of our offenders have role playing sessions in such things, and spanking gives them a thrill)
OK, that last crack was about the FUNNIEST thing I've heard on these forums since I started watching!!!! Nice going...
Cindy
long ago I taught "introduction to logic" at a state univesidey, and quite honestly, the highest grade I see in these posts is a C+ in the informal fallacy section, no one gets more than a D in formal logic, and mathematical logic.... well lets just schedule a remedial program (thank god no one is grading typing or spelling):lol:
Bj --
How can you grade formal and mathematical logic when no one is doing it? Are you really suggesting that we should formalize our arguments. That seems extremely silly -- especially if our goal is to be understood.
Beathan
Thank you for making my point breathen, your confusing inference with implication, and making wonderful leaps of well formed illogic across unsupportable chasms of conclusions, but then attorneys are trained in sophism and schooled in the art of the equivocal, and yet you have the adacity to call me silly. Better silly than a muddle minded name caller. 
BJ --
Confusing inference with implication? That is like confusing driving with an internal combustion engine. Implication is the logical relationship between propositions. Inference is a cognitive process through which thinking beings find meaning. They are linked -- thinking beings, through inference, derive meaning from propositions that relate by implication. I have always found the phrase "confusing inference with implication" to be a conversation stopper used by the side losing a logical debate. (The only worse phrase, in my opinion, is "that's just semantics" -- which roughly translates as "that's just the meaning of what we are talking about.")
Leaps of logic? All I did was observe that no one had yet made a formal logical argument -- and thank God, because all the squiggles, parentheses and upside down Vs would hurt our eyes.
Beathan
Barbara, Celarent, Darii, Ferio que prioris;
Cesare, Camestres, Festino, Baroko secundae;
Tertia, Darapti, Disamis, Datisi, Felapton,
Bokardo, Ferison, habet; Quarta in super addit
Bramantip, Camenes, Dimaris, Fesapo, Fresison
BJ considers mailing Breathen a logic text covering both formal and informal fallacies, but then remembers that breathen lacks a sense of humor and sends the collected works of dilbert instead, hoping that it might help him learn to laugh if only he were subtle enough to see the implications, or infer the jokes between the lines.
(Why is it that the devil will not let me extinguish Brathen's behaivor by ignoring it, why oh why am i allowing myself to troll for an easy fish like breathen?)
BJ --
OK --
Fair enough. Because I can't see the joke (although I am not usually joke-impervious), I will just bow to your eerie subtlety. BTW -- I have plenty of logic texts already, and my secretarial staff keep me well supplied with Dilbert.
Beathan