Fruck
Lacks all conviction
Fruck is just this guy, you know?
User ID: 889
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
11hr ago
Not my post but that's a good argument. If I were remzem I might say it is never psychologically healthy to get so involved in anything on the internet that it has a noticeable impact on your mood. If I were me and I had made the op I would say that to dismantle your appeal to the emotions of readers by making them empathise with the discouraged, I had to neutralise the empathy - and I assumed game would recognise game and you would respond with a better argument.
Have you really reprimanded each other before? Do you mean aside from Hlynka? It would be neat to see evidence of that, because previously I have been told that you guys don't pay much attention to reported mod posts because they're always punished users being spiteful.
Fake edit: I got a phone call that interrupted this post, but coming back to it I realise I have been focused too much on symptoms, which is exactly what I'm bitching about elsewhere. To me it looks like the root cause of the issue is that you need some more mods. Zorba has his hands full with the backend, so you have to use shortcuts to keep up. I'd suggest recruiting someone like netstack, 2rafa, selfmadehuman, or ToaKrakoa.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
14hr ago
It's no different from saying that you're going to make a lot of obnoxious bad faith arguments, but with a polite tone, and see how long it takes to piss everyone off. Yeah, you could do that. But I would hope that no one wants to.
I think you are being very optimistic. Especially when we are talking about nerds, and double especially when we are talking about contrarian nerds who talk about verboten topics, my expectation is that any available vulnerability will be exploited, the only question is when. We have indeed seen the "unfailingly polite but obviously bad faith" method used, and it won't be long before we see this method too - assuming we don't count firmamenti's post here, or various posts by others from the prior month that I can't prove but strongly suspect were gpted.
The thing is, my biggest issue with it is that while there will be trolls, I am more worried about our hammers finding a new class of nail - I don't think the mods will be nearly skittish enough. They are invariably going to make someone feel like absolute shit by calling their earnest early forays into writing 'like a motter' "obviously chatgpt". It's the worst of both worlds - gpters will just deny using it, and some innocent people are going to be confidently smeared as bots.
Also you absolutely can moderate for quality, of course you can, that's how media criticism started. We just haven't figured out how to do it while keeping in line with the other rules like niceness. Yet. I think we could if we tried.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
20hr ago
Along with what @Jiro said, just look at this thread. As you say, firmamenti's mistake was admitting he used chatgpt - if he hadn't he couldn't have been banned. That's setting up some rather perverse incentives. In another chain of this thread cjet explains:
People seem to come out of the woodwork every time this comes up acting like I'm asking them to write a novel. I'm not. Just start the discussion, put some level of thinking and effort into your post. If it looks like you tried and fell short I'll probably only provide a warning. The original poster did not try at all. And there is a group of users that constantly want to resurrect the bare links thread, so they post what they think is just past the line on acceptable. Sometimes I am going to drop bans for this. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
Is that clear? Start the discussion, put some level of thinking and effort into your post. But if that thinking and effort amounts to "just past the line on acceptable" - which is to say if it amounts to acceptable, but is too short, or you have ever asked for the BLR back, then you are playing stupid games and should expect stupid prizes. So literally the only metric used is length.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
20hr ago
Of course it would be fine, nobody here can punish you for any reason. But let's pretend there was some mechanism by which users could correct flawed behaviour by mods. I would say adding the word suicidally in there was obvious hyperbole to paint your opponents poorly. I can not say the same of calling the disheartened despondent, even google considers that accurate -
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
1d ago
This is not trolling, or if it is, it's white hat trolling. It is revealing a critical flaw in the metrics the motte uses to gauge quality. Yes our stated preference is to generate interesting and entertaining conversations, but our revealed preferences say actually, it is just about writing long posts.
If firmamenti hadn't said anything about chatgpt or written this in reply to FNE, just posted it as a top level post, would it have been banned do you think? What if they'd just written it, no gpt involved? I am almost certain it would not. Because yes, what we want is interesting, entertaining and informative posts, but telling someone their post is boring and badly written is against the rules unless you put an absurd amount of effort into couching it in a way that has doesn't trigger negative emotions (and so it is usually immediately dismissed by the target).
If you don't like how someone writes, block them or minimise their post we are told, because you can't say "Hey you need to write less because you are bad at it." You say failing at writing long posts well is just as bad as writing a short post, but there is no mechanism for punishing the former, so that's what we get.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
1d ago
Right, and we are assuming remzem did this to fuck with the moderators based on what exactly? Because from what I see remzem wrote a funny but insufficiently deferential comment, realised it wasn't going to fly and deleted it, and is now copping flak because someone in the future might abuse this deleting? This is fucking retarded, we are incentivising not fixing mistakes to ward off an issue we have never had a problem with.
Although admittedly, if I scrutinise my feelings, I probably would have just rolled my eyes at this thread if it hadn't begun with @cjet79 feeling slighted and wanting to clap back, SO HE UNDELETED A COMMENT SO HE COULD REPLY TO IT.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
1d ago
Yeah this is fucking torture, but firmamenti is correct, this would have been tolerated.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
1d ago
Yeah this is severely not fun. I really don't understand why you put this in this thread instead of the cw thread, it would fit in much better. There is nothing fun about this thread.
Spend your money any way you like, don't try to justify it. Personally I'm with @CertainlyWorse - spend it locally. Improve the lives of people in your area, especially if you are concerned about the efficacy of your charity - Africa, Asia, South America - you might as well be shooting your money directly at the moon for all the impact you'll see.
Well, conquest is parallel killing, not serial killing, so naturally there's less current resistance to it.
Damn it man, can't you see I'm trying to be cranky?
More seriously, the utility and sociality of war don't even enter the equation for me, I stop short after thinking about popular culture, which considers a lack of conflict a complete non-starter in terms of entertainment value. Our brains are wired to think conquest - competing and winning and celebrating your power - is cool regardless of its utility in our current climate. Boys and men in particular are drawn to it and no amount of peer pressure is going to change that. Eetan obviously wants to stigmatise indo-european studies, and I assume it's because he doesn't want the cw thread to fill up with Aryan supremacy shit - which I sympathise with - but all of the prehistoric civilisations were fascinating as hell and I have to push back against his attempts to stigmatise learning about them. And to then go the step further and claim only psychopaths enjoy battles is just preposterous.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
6d ago
Come the fuck on, your first post was consensus building already, no need to take it a step further and paint like, 90% of the guys I grew up with - including myself - as God damned serial killers just because we think conquest is cooler than road building.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
6d ago
Six paragraphs?! @FiveHourMarathon got War and Peace down to three words and I now demand all fiction in that format.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
7d ago
Outstandingly informative post! I hope you aren't lumping me in with bronze age keyboard warriors though, because my basic philosophy can be summarised as being human means striving to exceed the limits of might makes right.
I also don't see what's wrong with preferring to avoid farming if possible and wanted to provide another ancient example of that mindset, which might not have been said by Anaxandridas II, but was clearly understood by Plutarch. This thread reads like mango worship to me.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
7d ago
Ah, the post I was thinking of must have been inspired by that one, it was a tangent in the main thread iirc - although I still can't find it, so maybe I don't.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
7d ago
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
7d ago
I am also reminded of King Anaxandridas II of Sparta, who was alleged to have told someone who asked why Spartans didn't till their fields but instead had their helots do it, that "It was not by taking care of the fields, but of ourselves, that we acquired those fields."
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
8d ago
I was going to go with Bowie's I'm Afraid of Americans, is that classic rock?
It's a very catchy tune, and even children can sing along with it (even the very young ones can join in on the na na na na nanana bit).
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
8d ago
I wish I had remembered this exchange about 6 months ago, then I could have just quoted your post when I was arguing with Australians about the voice to parliament and saved myself a lot of time.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
10d ago
Why would the DOJ need to cover their ass if he wasn't a stooge? People get called snitches all the time, I can't find any other examples of the DOJ even feeling the need to respond to claims of that nature, let alone prosecute.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
10d ago
Lol I thought something similar - maybe firmamenti meant Forest Whittaker's IA guy? Or Dutch? Vic and the boys all struck me as close to irredeemable (except poor Lenny.)
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
10d ago
I like to call it functional nihilism, because it makes me look smart.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
10d ago
Maybe you should explain your argument better and show me the way, because it looks to me like your argument is:
vice writers care about cheating, but not enough to write an article about it without an attack angle because they think being part of the enemy tribe is worse than cheating, but they do care about cheating and therefore this article they only wrote because it attacked the enemy tribe is not just an attack on the enemy tribe.
Also I will point out that while you respond primarily in gotchas, I have attempted to explain my position in full and even gave you an evidence based test, which you couldn't do. So if my bar is low...
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
11d ago
I don't think the statement was falsified, I think it's unlikely the church will say anything about the vice article. I thought you were falling for a false dichotomy - 'they commented on the elder stolen valor thing, so not commenting on the vice article implies they agree with it'. It kind of looks like you are falling for it again here -
we don't know specifically why the Church viewed his actions as morally unacceptable, but it is true that he has repeatedly invoked Elder Ballards name and the Church is trying very hard to tamp down on various forms of affinity fraud that sadly take in many of our more guileless members.
Because it's true we don't know exactly why the church rebuked him, because they took down the statement they made (which implies they don't fully support it imo, but let's assume they do support it for this argument regardless), but we can be pretty damn sure they were rebuking him for claiming he was good friends with elder Ballard and not the allegations of sexual misconduct, because they speak at length about the elder thing and never say anything about allegations of sexual misconduct. Based on the evidence in this article, there is zero reason to think the church were rebuking him for the sexual misconduct.
To be clear, I don't think anyone in the church has done anything shady at all (except younger Ballard). But I trust vice about as far as I can kick them, and this article only reinforces that.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
11d ago
I get what you're saying, but in my perspective it's the same old story - establishment vs counter culture.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
11d ago
Sure, the point is I don't think anyone at vice gives a shit about marriage. I don't think they think cheating is awesome, I think they think cheating is meh, or maybe even an anachronism, unless it happens to them. I think the closest any writer there comes to respecting the promise of fidelity is that they would suffer a narcissistic injury if they were cheated on, because most people do. So I think all this weeping and gnashing of teeth about this guy is crocodile tears at best, but more likely something like a smuggie.
Which yes, I saw your comment replying to someone else noticing it fits the smuggie form, and I can only say - Come. On. Son. You've pretty much agreed to the argument already - "Not as bad as being part of the enemy tribe, perhaps" - now we're just arguing severity. And what I'm saying is yeah they aren't 'totally ok' with it, but literally the only reason they bring it up is to tar their opponent. It is performative, and blatantly obviously so.
Tldr: I think it's pretty ironic you are accusing me of trying to score cheap political points, since that is the only reason the article exists.
I was really hoping that my first aaqc would be for my post about my dad teaching me how to use toothpaste (as thermal paste.) I know it's not a particularly mottey post, but at the time I wrote it I was worried I would lose him and reminiscing with him (or at him I guess, he was in a coma) and it was nice to have a record. And while I don't particularly care about aaqcs (although I certainly appreciate the sentiment behind them and am grateful to anyone who voted for me) I think he would have liked to know one of our outings made people smile. Which reminds me - @self_made_human and @inappropriatecontent - you both said kind things about that post and I was too occupied and then too distracted to reply, but I really appreciated them and wanted to reply, but couldn't find the words at the time (or rather the sentiment behind them). Here are those words and the sentiment now though - thanks guys, I really appreciate it!
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