The Cramulus Debacle

[Captain Utopia]

Ummm...

From the Secret History #1 thread:

What you are stating above is a black and white false dilemma, not optimal, and it doesn't even cut to the point of the problem:

WRONG LEVEL OF ORGANIZATION.

And as for /complexity/, FAKE EXPLANATIONS, MOTHERFUCKER, DO YOU KNOW THEM?

You didn't have to spot them.  Kai explicitly referenced them.  He did the hard part for you.

I am definitely not too proud to admit that I sometimes need my hand held and be walked through an argument to see it.  Kai was stating that describing a spectrum of influence the collective has upon the individual was presenting a false dilemma - I just spent another five minutes looking at that post and I still don't spot it.

[BadBeast]

I thinkthe "false dilemma" is suddenly having to evaluate a new element, that is really an established element pretending to be a new element. For whatever reason. It's uneccessary, (Or it should be) and distracting.

[Captain Utopia]

On a board like this, using an alt is fraught with potential consequences that need to be taken into consideration. Just doing it on a whim is probably never going to end well. Especially for a veteran poster.

Reminds me of the "you deserve to get raped if you dress that provocatively" argument.  If it hadn't been for the dog-piling and all-caps confrontational behaviour, then everything would have been just fine.

[LMNO]

On a board like this, using an alt is fraught with potential consequences that need to be taken into consideration. Just doing it on a whim is probably never going to end well. Especially for a veteran poster.

Reminds me of the "you deserve to get raped if you dress that provocatively" argument.  If it hadn't been for the dog-piling and all-caps confrontational behaviour, then everything would have been just fine.

...


You really just made that analogy?  Really?

[Captain Utopia]

You really just made that analogy?  Really?

"In a neighbourhood like this, dressing like that is fraught with potential consequences that need to be taken into consideration. Just doing it on a whim is probably never going to end well. Especially for a nice girl like you."

Am I using the "WRONG LEVEL OF ORGANIZATION." ?

[LMNO]

No, you made a sloppy parallel, and then introduced a level of emotional reaction by trying to equate the posters at PD.com with RAPISTS.

[LMNO]

Let me repeat that:


YOU JUST CALLED THE MEMBERS OF PD.COM RAPISTS.

[Sir Fronkensteen, The Hawk]

OH god...

They discovered my sceret!

[Captain Utopia]

Yeah, that was bad form.  I apologise.

[BadBeast]

But that's what happens when someone does stuff like that here, that's the potential consequences that need to be thought about. It's not like it's rare or unpredictable behaviour.

[LMNO]

Yeah, that was bad form.  I apologise.

Ok.  That's cool.

Now, the parallel also breaks down because posting at PD as an alt is not the same as getting dressed in the morning.

Posting as an alt is a conscious choice to wear a disguise.  To misrepresent yourself.  At PD.com, there is a well-documented history of alts doing considerable damage to the relationships and social dynamics of the board.  If you wanted to make an analogy, it would be like wearing Klan robes in Harlem, and then wondering why everyone was so mad at you.

[Kai]

Do we really need to continually repeat the litany of debate fallacies in every single thread?

Look what I googled:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dilemma
http://lesswrong.com/lw/ip/fake_explanations/
metatalk.metafilter.com/10572/Sweeping-generalizations-bad
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor

If anyone bothered to research the terms Kai used, they could figure out the problem themselves.

It's not completely random that I've been linking to less wrong left and right recently. I've been reading the sequences often. That's my fault, I'm sorry. Wait, no I'm not.   It not only makes me more likely to point out someone elses issues, but to take it to heart and listen when someone points out the flaws in my own arguments. That final part being the most important. For example, were I to introduce a false dilemma, and someone pointed that out, I would thank them and start thinking for third alternatives.

@Badbeast: I know what you are saying. We here at PD.com don't play nice, and we're open about not playing nice, instead of pretending that we are all cuddly and then surprising the newbies with our atrocities later. And we are tribal, and open about being tribal, and open about experience with people = status among peers.

I guess the only thing I feel guilty about in all this is making a mess in Roger's thread. Something that I am actually sorry about, and not just feeling social guilt over.

[Triple Zero]

Fuck that Phineas guy. In the ear.

I am one of Cramulus's alts too and that's no excuse, you don't see me being all stupid and reasonable and shit, so there.



And they always say "Hey triplezero, how come you and Phineas and Cramulus are never in the same room together, eh? What's up with THAT?", well I let you know what's up with that, I'd totally fucking Phineas for being such a n00b. In the ear. In his fucking diabetic-ass pasty ear.

But then Cram is all like "noooo you guys shouldn't fight"

And I respect that. So that's why I'm not in the same room as him.

[Sir Fronkensteen, The Hawk]

Fuck that Phineas guy. In the ear.

I am one of Cramulus's alts too and that's no excuse, you don't see me being all stupid and reasonable and shit, so there.



And they always say "Hey triplezero, how come you and Phineas and Cramulus are never in the same room together, eh? What's up with THAT?", well I let you know what's up with that, I'd totally fucking Phineas for being such a n00b. In the ear. In his fucking diabetic-ass pasty ear.

But then Cram is all like "noooo you guys shouldn't fight"

And I respect that. So that's why I'm not in the same room as him.

[Zyzyx]

Admittedly I also overreacted, as my composure isn't too great, but I had time to think and am no longer omg-ing. While it was silly of me to tell Cramulus to "lurk more", not knowing that it was Cramulus kind of makes that whole thing moot. It's just confusing when someone makes an alt on a message board. You're a bunch of trolls, and trolls like to troll other trolls sometimes, its understandable. But when you make a forum alt and you're not trolling it's just confusing. Not saying you should kiss it and make it better or anything, that's not necessary at all.

I over-apologized, because I felt that I was in danger of losing my neutral lurker status here. I like lurking here, there are great ideas flying around and many of you are funny as hell and brutally, admirably honest. When something like the Debacle happens, I scramble to try and clean it up on my end instead of just letting it fester, I'm anxious, it's a fault of mine and I deal with it because I have to but sometimes it gets out of hand. To my relief things have smoothed out, so its not that big a deal anymore nor was it ever that big a deal.

Fuck that Phineas guy. In the ear.

I am one of Cramulus's alts too and that's no excuse, you don't see me being all stupid and reasonable and shit, so there.



And they always say "Hey triplezero, how come you and Phineas and Cramulus are never in the same room together, eh? What's up with THAT?", well I let you know what's up with that, I'd totally fucking Phineas for being such a n00b. In the ear. In his fucking diabetic-ass pasty ear.

But then Cram is all like "noooo you guys shouldn't fight"

And I respect that. So that's why I'm not in the same room as him.

...oh. It's like /that/. MY BRAIN AND SPINE