Comments and Questions on The Lounge here

[iron81]

We screwed this one up I guess.

Wookie locked the thread after I got into a debate with a couple Anarcho-Capitalists (AC'ers). It stinks because I told Mason in ATF that this was a good thread that proves that we can handle political discussion. The reasons Wookie gave were:

1. Nitpicking questions

Although I enjoyed answering these questions, I can see how its not what the mods want. I'll try to remind people who aren't discussing thoughtfully because I will ususally see the bad posts before the mods when I'm in these threads. But you have to remember that asking questions in this case isn't avoiding debate, it is simply another way to debate. Believe me, I knew exactly where their positions were. The thing with Anarcho-Capitalism is that it is a relatively simple philosophy and in theory, simple to implement. In addition, there is not a lot of real-world experience with an Anarcho-Capitalst system, so there is not much evidence for the effectiveness of that system. Therefore, AC'ers will not be able to support their opinions as effectively as they could, although AC is certainly a legitimate philosophy.

Also, I should ask about the practice of articulating arguments point by point rather than in a narrative. The discussion became point by point in this thread, but I honestly don't know if this is frowned upon. I would apprieciate clarification.

2. Inflammatory pictures.

Check. Although I would remind the mods that "a picture speaks a thousand words", I can see how those pictures were particularly bad. I was guilty of a similar tactic by linking articles a couple times rather than articulating my arguments myself. Normal debate demands support for your opinions, and linking articles is an easy and accessible way to do this. Is this ok?

3. reduction ad absurdum

I am not sure about this one. I think an example of this is when I claimed that the government has the right to levy taxes and the response was: 1. The government is stealing money by collecting taxes 2. I was ok with this because of my postion so therefore 3. I should be forced to hand over money at his request and 4. Since 3 is obviously immoral, then my pro-government position is wrong. I am not well versed in logical fallacies (I had to read up on this on) so I am not sure if this is correct, but I know em when I see em. Before the thread was locked, I thought I effectively rebutted that argument and I think that is the correct way to handle that particular situation. When engaging in debate, it is sometimes true that one side is objectively wrong. This side is likely to engage in logical fallacies to argue their point. Frankly, there are a lot of political topics and non-political topics that would be off limits if usage of logical fallacies were cause for ending debate and I think that is wrong.

I would also like to allow for the possibility that political threads are being held to a higher standard than the already high standard of non-political TLDR threads. I have been working to get in tune with the mods for the political threads but I have not looked through the music and movie threads. I had actually never visited here until a couple days ago, so I am not certain how strictly the non-political threads are modded. I have no idea if I am off base here, but I just wanted to raise the issue. And if I have misinterpred the modding rules in that thread by making bad posts, I would certainly appreciate constructive criticism. Thank you.

[diebitter]

I want to make some points about the politics threads here.

tl:dr is intended to be a somewhat-exclusive, relatively easy-going, discussion-led area of 2+2. tl:dr mods (and other mods) have been watching the threads closely and discussing things that come up, and it's clear to me this is going to be a strain to politicos to fit into this approach, but that is how it is. I do appreciate some of you are trying hard, and some of the threads contain a majority of good, appropriate stuff with the odd bit of diatribe etc, and we've been letting some of it go to see how it develops.

However, I am now putting the onus on politicos to fit in better. The warnings are over, the suspensions are beginning. pvn is the first, and has just got a 3-dayer for a post in the one about taxation (which started and ran for a bit very well) - partly for the horrible pictures he posted, but also for his ranting approach which contained numerous unsubstantiated statements that really didn't move the discussion forward. The onus will also be on you guys to finds the rules/mod comments where they've been made and conform to them (it's gonna work like 'legal precedent' rather than pre-set rules, is a way to look at it). I don't mind if one of you keeps a running tally of these and posts it here for the benefit of all politicos, but I won't be going out of my way to make each and every rule available to all in a convenient way (it is the weekend, people, real life calls).

We will suspend and delete posts in threads where we have the time, but I urge the more reasonable among you
NOT to quote stupid posts, as your reasonable stuff may be deleted alongside the rubbish. Where we don't have the time or a thread has degenerated, it will be locked or removed as we see fit, with punishments given. Punishments are given for 3 reasons: breaking rules or deliberately going against the tone of the forum; to educate the offender and other posters on what is acceptable; to reflect the work the mod needs to do to keep the forum clean.

Note you are better to never respond to diatribes/rude comments/nonsense, than to feed it



===============================================

I wanted to comment on the tendency to diatribe/soapbox. Here's a post by Nicky G in the Blair thread:

[ QUOTE ]

It's difficult to reply to this without breaking the ban on Lebanon discussion. If this breaks the rules, Mods please delete.

It's telling that Blair prefers to support dictatorial regimes inplaces like Egypt, Algeria and Chechnya, backed by extraordinarily brutal militaries that have been allegedly "moving in the right direction" for decades with no serious Western pressure (rather, we give them military aid), than movements that contest real elections and have vastly more support amongst local Muslims.

Blair likes to repeat that the West bears no fault in this, that Middle Easterners and Muslims have a false and completely irrational sense of grievance against the West. Completely ignoring Israel Palestine for the sake of the forum, he seems to forget that France and Britain alone ruled virtually the entire Middle East for about half a century, France's rule of Algeria lasting 130 years and causing between 3mn and 8mn deaths. The rule was not exactly democratic. Since then Western countries have endlessly interfered in the region through war, coups, sanctions and the like and uniformally backed corrupt and brutal dictators. In Chechnya they kept silent over Russia's years of torture, rape and mass murder in the face of what started as a blatantly nationalist rather than Islamic struggle against a decades old foe that once deported teh entire population to Siberia, but exploded into one-sided outrage once Russia became the victim of terrorism. He ignores that the West uniformly cheereed on the Algerian generals' decision to cancel the results of the 1991 elections, torture and throw thousands of people into detention camps in the Sahara and engage in a brutal civil in which the government disappeared 18.000 people and was complicit in if not outright responsible for many of the massacres blamed on "terrorists," many of which strangely enough took place in towns and villages that had voted overwhelmingly for the Islamists in the elections. He's happy to ignore the completely fraudulent elections since. He forgets that the West supported Saddam Hussein right up until the first tank rolled into Kuwait. What are Middle Eastern Muslims supposed to think of "Western values" then? We talk of democracy and human rights to them but all they see of us is war, foreign rule, hypocrisy, support for occupation, dictatorship and toruture and Western-made missiles landing in their neighbourhoods.

Colonialists - forgotten here but vivdly remembered in many Middle Eastern countries - talked the exact same talk Blair does about "values"; they were there to "civilise", not to conquer. They killed and displaced millions and turned the Middle East into the flaming disaster it is now. Every time the West touches the Middle East it's a catastrophe for both the people living there and teh West itself; every horse it backs winds up torturing and murdering thousands and fuels support for various nationalist and religious causes turned anti-Western by them, boosts the cause of criminals and drains people of any sympathy for civilians on the other side. People living there have thee own values, they don't need or want ours imposed on them especially as everything we do there winds up being enormously counter-productive.

I never liked Tony Blair, and was horrified when he won the Labour leadership. Yet I never thought for an instant I'd come to despise him more than Thatcher or see him turn into the imperialist zealot he's become today.


[/ QUOTE ]



Now, I appreciate NG is trying to conform to the rules, which is a point in his favour, and some of this is indeed releveant for here. But here's the thing...


It reads like a rabid soapboxer doing his thing.


There's a lot of sound and fury here, but I'm ignorant of a lot of these matters, as will many posters be here, so posts like these - where there is lots of information presented as fact - will need in future some citation from credible sources (by this I mean places like the BBC and other credible news+history sites), even wikipedia, but NOT the 'Institute of L/R-Wing ThinkTank' type deals. Otherwise cite books/offline resources if needed, with links to, say, amazon for the books in question. IF you can't cite sources, AT THE VERY LEAST, temper your phrasing to show you're talking from memory/hearsay/a position of partial knowledge/whatever. (Read some AJP Taylor or John Roberts if you want to see an example of writing that presents information that cannot be cited as fact, but to which a reasonable level of certainty can be ascribed.)


I suggest to all that instead of very long posts to make your point, try less words, but a little more credible linkage to support what you say; this would greatly support your points and make the whole discussion process a much more vital, educational, interesting and worthwhile enterprise.


I'm not suggesting you need to write like it's an essay for a Professor to read, but it needs to be closer to that than the soapbox rant given above. Similarly, don't feel you need to reduce your posts to a couple of lines for the sake of it. Say what you have to in your own time, but try a little less emotion, and little more precepts->logical outcome/reasoning/citation.


I am leaving it in the Blair thread as, frankly, an example of what we don't want in the Lounge, and you will be sailing close to the wind if you soapbox like this in future.


Cliff Notes:

- Less is more.
- Quality > Quantity
- Citation > Number of unsubstantiated statements


Oh, and from now, excessive soapboxing==b1 suspension



==============

I hope this helps out some of you politicos. I am impressed by the effort some of you are putting in to conform here, and I and the other tl:dr mods are grateful for efforts. But note, I'd be even more grateful for citations I can read, so I can understand and appreciate the issues discussed better than I do now.

But to repeat, warnings are over. suspensions to help give precedents have begun.


db

[Triumph36]

I think, and have thought even when there was a Politics forum, that all posts concerning Anarcho-Capitalism should go in the SMP forum. It always turns into the same debate which is by nature philosophical and not political.

[SLP]

[ QUOTE ]
I think, and have thought even when there was a Politics forum, that all posts concerning Anarcho-Capitalism should go in the SMP forum. It always turns into the same debate which is by nature philosophical and not political.

[/ QUOTE ]

I think this post is very insightful. I personally do not believe that AC posts should be limited to the SMP forum. However, he is right that AC versus statist arguments really boil down to differences that are, at bottom, philisophical. These differences do have political ramifications; that is why I think they are fine being posted in a political forum.

An example is when someone equates taxation with theft. Such a statement implicity assumes that people have inherent property rights. ACers treat this proposition as axiomatic, when it in fact contains assumptions (philosophical in nature) that not all of us share.

This is also why picking apart someone else's post and responding in soundbite-like fashion is not helpful. Responding with statements like "taxation is theft" glosses over fundamental and philosophical differences that should be hashed out rather than ignored.

As an aside, I think that db and Wookie are doing a great job of modding the political posts thus far. They are doing the job that [censored] should have done when asked to mod the politics forum. I believe that the political discussion in tl;dr will be excellent.

edited for spelling

[ACPlayer]

Giving specific reasons why you (as the mods) dont like particular posts is a very good idea. The problem I have had with "intellectual dishonesty", "hate" etc is that it is not very helpful.

I also suggest that a discussion of evaluating "rabid left/right wing" and "hate" sites would be a good thing. Perhaps a set of guidelines to evaluate the quality of the site would be helpful.

[NT!]

[ QUOTE ]
An example is when someone equates taxation with theft. Such a statement implicity assumes that people have inherent property rights. ACers treat this proposition as axiomatic, when it in fact contains assumptions (philosophical in nature) that not all of us share.

This is also why picking apart someone else's post and responding in soundbite-like fashion is not helpful. Responding with statements like "taxation is theft" glosses over fundamental and philosophical differences that should be hashed out rather than ignored.



[/ QUOTE ]

Very nicely put.

In response to Triumph: There is no separating Politics from Philosophy. There is bound to be some overlap. I would guess that before Politics disappeared the idea was that it would be a place to discuss ongoing issues or systems of political organization rather than root issues / polemics on the subject. However in practice I don't think you're going to get much in-depth reading of political philosophy from SMP.

NT

[MidGe]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
An example is when someone equates taxation with theft. Such a statement implicity assumes that people have inherent property rights. ACers treat this proposition as axiomatic, when it in fact contains assumptions (philosophical in nature) that not all of us share.

This is also why picking apart someone else's post and responding in soundbite-like fashion is not helpful. Responding with statements like "taxation is theft" glosses over fundamental and philosophical differences that should be hashed out rather than ignored.



[/ QUOTE ]

Very nicely put.


NT

[/ QUOTE ]

[ACPlayer]

Here is one reference

This is a list of questions that are worth asking about any site that a poster references in evaluating the site. The questions are independent of the actual content (mostly).

The one question: Does this site seem overly biased? is likely to be the trickiest. However, personally, if the bias is clearly stated in the site's objective then it should be considered acceptable (as in if the site sponsor clearly says, we are a pro-republican site and then praises bush that should be acceptable, but if the site says "we seek the truth everywhere we find" but then consistently praises Bush or Hilary etc then we know that this is a site that has a hidden agenda and should be viewed with caution).

[New001]

A question for Diebitter and the other mods: does "no Middle Eastern threads" apply to Iraq as well, or is it simply supposed to keep out the Israel-Hezbollah-Lebanon conflict?

I also agree regarding the AC content. In some instances (see the recent estate tax thread) there's no problem, but when it just gets to state-no state pissing matches, there's really no point at all. This is coming from a libertarian/ACist on occaision.

[diebitter]

Specifically the Lenabon situation, and Israel, is the no-no for now. Iraq issues are okay to discuss, where they don't flow over into talk of Israel.