An apology where someone can't explain the negative consequences of the behavour they're apologizing for is no real apology. I will reiterate that I find this behaviour cowardly and unbecoming. Since you seem to be confused about my preferences I will again state them openly: apologize if you really, legitimately think you did something wrong and understand what it was and can articulate it to me. Don't if you don't, and defend your claim appropriately. Since you are unwilling or unable to do the former up til now, I have to assume that your apology is insincere, as your defense of your behaviour implies. So do the latter full throatedly instead of half heartedly and provide your evidence.
edit: apologies like yours have no predictive power about your future actions. Since in your words your error was merely "overconfidence", not an attempted lie/smear, and you haven't demonstrated an understanding of how such actions could affect me, I don't see why you would feel the need in the future to not do exactly the same thing over again.
I find your mincing of words to be inaccurate and offensive. You have somehow "not claimed or even implied that I am a liar" while claiming that you "know" that I am someone who I claim not to be in public, and have done so previously. What would you call this, if not claiming that I am a liar or dishonest?? You have "taken my claim at face value" while defending to the death that there was nothing wrong with your initial observation except "overconfidence".
You did make the claim flippantly with zero evidence. This is an undisputed fact that you are free to rectify at any time, you have not provided a single shred of evidence other than your vaguest feeling that our posts are similar somehow. Make your effort post about my contributions to the forum to prove your case. What I find offensive is your flipflopping on the matter. According to you, you have both A) done something wrong and b) your analysis is actually good, you were merely overconfident, you have no systemic bias in your moderator actions, and it is somehow me being overly "emotional" to request a sincere apology.
You are still dancing around the consequences of your behaviour. You haven't answered: Why did you decide to smear my account like this? What are the consequences of discrediting my account by sharing false information?? Could it perhaps be that you wanted to produce a chilling effect and discredit the words that I write with no legitimate basis? If this is not true, attempt to explain how it is not. You have not done this.
If you refuse to either apologize sincerely or defend your claim in proportion to how inflammatory it is, I will indeed pursue other avenues or be forced to throw up my hands and accept this cowardly treatment. At the end of the day, your behaviour as a moderator is not your own business.
Edit: you have also decided to substitute your own altered version of my thought experiment instead of engaging at all with the meat of the issue: what effect do you think your words have on people who speak like Bob? Is it acceptable to you to unfairly impugn anyone as being Bob who's not willing to go to the lengths I have to reply with paragraphs and paragraphs to extract a half hearted apology on the matter? Does your apology say anything about how you will treat other people who speak like Bob? How should the book club authority's behaviour change to avoid this happening?
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Your apology is not sincere and I do not accept it as such, since you cannot articulate what it is that you did wrong. You say that you apologize for "overstating your confidence in my case", but this is not what you did. You said that you "knew" I was an alt, and implied it was "known" by others. To a neutral third party observer of your moderator behaviour, that would seem to imply that you have evidence that your assertion was correct from modmail or something. You did not exaggerate the confidence of one of your beliefs, you directly lied and wrote a falsehood with the intent to discredit my account. Edit: saying that something is "known" when you don't provide evidence for it and the something is a pretty inflammatory claim about another user is almost literally the quintessential definition of consensus-building. Do you disagree? This is what I call cowardly behaviour from a moderator, and I find it even more cowardly to pretend to apologize in the manner you have without demonstrating that you understand what about your behaviour was unacceptable. If you don't feel contrition about impugning my character, then I would appreciate you not pretending to.
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Regardless of how many other left leaning posters are suspected of being alts, I have endured this claim now more than once from more than one person, in both cases with not even an assertion that they felt the need to prove their reasoning to a third party. If such inflammatory claims are able to be made repeatedly on this forum, even by a moderator, then I fail to see how the rules are being upheld.
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It beggars belief to me that you cannot understand how behaviour like yours has a chilling effect on left leaning posters. Imagine I decide to attend a book club. I read up on the book and am excited to share my thoughts with the rest of the new members I meet there. The book club is ran by a few authority figures. Once I arrive, people go around the room and start sharing their thoughts. When it's my turn, I start talking about how I like a certain character and you, the authority figure, pipe up and say "Whoa, how can you say that about Character X? You're just like Bob, the member I had to kick out becuase I didn't like them 2 weeks ago, he always loved those problematic characters. Guys, the way this new member's going to engage in our club isn't right for us, I think he's being dishonest and manipulative exactly like Bob was. I know him from elsewhere and he's trouble. But I'm not actually banning him." What about this scenario is unclear or disanalogous to the present context, if you disagree? If you didn't think your comment would have a chilling effect on me, then I struggle to see what your point even was, since you admit your intention is for his (you assumed my) efforts to bear no fruit and his games not to be entertained. Edit: It seems clear that 1 of 2 things must be true here. a) Your words as an authority figure do not hold any weight with the other members of the group, nor do your claims of additional knowledge, so you are vocalizing something with no purpose. 2. You intend for your words to produce a chilling effect towards the new member, because your words and claims to knowledge as an authority figure are respected, at least somewhat.
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You say that "effort takes time" and yet, you are still not being precise or defending your claim with appropriate evidence for how inflammatory it is. At the end of this unsatisfactory reply you question what I would consider evidence as if by asking for some scant shred of evidence from you I have asked for a mountain. You waded into a conversation I was not involved in in order to purposefully discredit my account on illegitimate grounds. If you think you have a case for why you might be correct and your apology is not warranted, then I would appreciate you actually making your case. If you don't, then I would appreciate an apology where you don't also claim that your behaviour as a moderator, making claims like these still with no evidence, is totally acceptable and non problematic. Feel free to give the analysis of my posts a shot if you want to do the former.
Edit: Maybe a better question for me to ask you, to get at our disagreement: You seem to think your behaviour does not have a chilling effect on me or other left leaning posters. You say you have not banned me illegitimately. You seem to still think doing a long analysis of my posts comparing them to Darwin would be a fruitful exercise. So what are you apologizing for? What is the issue with, as you say, "overstating your confidence" that I am a liar?
You're really going to do this smug evidence-free drive-by character assassination in public and then not respond when asked for details?? I find this behaviour cowardly and unbecoming of a moderator.
Once again, is this alt suspected or known? Where's your proof, other than that you don't believe multiple leftists would gather here?
That line about expending effort seems to have been hot air.
If you're a moderator and you know I've done something wrong, then you can ban me. Failing that it just seems like you have a bone to pick with a particular leftist and are taking it out on randos like me for no reason.
Edit: if that's really not the case, it should be easy to show. Or, once again, ban me if you feel I've done something wrong. What I do not like to tolerate is baseless lies with no attempt to even try to show evidence or reasoning in favour of a smug dismissal, especially by an authority figure such as a mod.
"He has at least two known alts here"
I'm sure this boogeyman you're discussing would be happy to know their reach has pervaded so far that (once again) random left leanng posters like myself are accused of being them for unclear reasons, with a tone of seething annoyance throughout. This has happened 2 or 3 times previously when I poke my head in the door.
It would be more accurate to say suspected alts, unless you're aware of some knowledge or evidence the rest of us are not privy to??
It's funny that my username being tied to another left leaning user who lots of people dislike is being invoked in response to a comment decrying the right wing tilt of the Motte. It seems pretty obvious that a moderator of this community engaging in such behaviour would have a chilling effect on left leaning users. How many people do you think you've wrongly accused of being this person over the years and banned because of it?
Edit: Perhaps a better question for the right leaning on the forum and moderators: If I were a mod of this community, how many people do you think I would ban and/or flag-accusingly for being sockpuppet accounts based on them sharing similar right wing views and my own amateur writing analysis?
cartman
19d ago
I prefer to talk in pragmatic terms, not the land of theoretical 0 pardons and spherical cows. The justice system is not perfect, and so the pardon is used as a balancing measure for corruption in other branches of government.
In the current world we live in, if the president would like to free some unlawfully convicted people, it is much easier for him to pardon them than to overhaul the entire legal system.
I would like the president to free unlawfully convicted people, as I imagine many people do. I would also like the president to not spend all his time doing this valuable activity with all the labour it entails. That is what his staff is literally there for.
cartman
20d ago
Excuse me, what?? Regardless of how carefully considered each pardon case is, even if we just assumed that they were all personally very carefully considered by the president himself, this would still be a completely ludicrous test.
Have you ever worked in case management before in any area of law? Or really in any administrative work. Lawyers routinely are involved in hundreds and thousands of cases over their career. I dare you to go up to the lawyers in your life and tell them that because they can't remember the names of each litigant they actually did not, in fact, carefully consider any of their cases. This is a patently absurd bar that is being made up as a hurdle for Biden for political reasons, and the premise completely falls apart on its face.
How do you think the president should be informed of potential pardons if not through recommendations??? Should the president decide pardons based on who he sees on the news that night? Do you want him to personally comb through the lists of convictions every week or month? Once again, this would be an absurd waste of the president's time for little (no?) gain.
cartman
21d ago
What a ludicrous thought experiment. No president in the last 100 years would have the slightest chance of passing this test, it's not even close, and that fact is probably to their credit. Do you want your president wasting their time memorizing some first and last names?
cartman
21d ago
I think it's silly to extrapolate morals from a cute anecdote with no information. It's not at all obvious what effect the sensei's comment would have had
cartman
2mo ago
Perhaps that's not your goal, but you have to agree that that is the goal of many of your counterparts and it's the goal of those in the White House who are implementing the policy directly. Their public statements on the matter are intentionally designed to be both silly and inflammatory
cartman
2mo ago
Polls are a lame argument when talking about public opinion and optics???
If you don't accept polls with evidence to the contrary of your views, and you don't accept arguments about shootings increasing being a sign of public opinion, then what evidence do you accept?
cartman
2mo ago
Was it the mainstream media that put up videos of ICE enforcement with silly music in the background, or was that the administration itself?
Was it the mainstream media, or the administration itself that decided ICE officers should be masked and incognito, while performing arrests unlike law enforcement officials?
Was it the mainstream media or the administration itself that declared that violence commited against ICE was a direct result of Democrat rhetoric?
Perhaps if you ignore all the facts it's easy to assume that the cruelty and unusual nature of this treatment is all an invention of the "mainstream media" but such a perspective is not supported by the facts
cartman
3mo ago
You don't seem to believe that it was in actuality a private, independent decision. But then you assume that it is in this conditional without identifying it as such. That's why I was confused
cartman
3mo ago
As you seem to agree then I'm confused why you used this language in the first place
Do you hint vaguely towards the idea that all people who advance convenient partisan arguments are actually infamous disgruntled ban evaders, or only the liberal/left leaning ones?
Edit: as someone who was also accused of being this individual previously, it is quite annoying that any liberal dissent from the mainstream here immediately garners accusations that we must be This One Person. I suppose it is a rare thing on this forum, but it only becomes rarer with this sort of selective hyper analysis.
cartman
3mo ago
When the firing comes after public comments and criticism from the head of the FCC explicitly threatening legal action, the view that this is an "independent private decision" is pretty questionable
cartman
3mo ago
You fail to mention that the majority of the top comments are actually decrying people celebrating the assassination as a dumb move.
cartman
3mo ago
Would you describe a statement claiming that your side is good and peaceful and the opponent's side is bad and violent, with no evidence to back it up, as waging the culture war?
cartman
3mo ago
While your odds of tripping on the rock might be about equal, it is certainly not equally disadvantageous. If I have 90 percent chance to win and I trip, Ive lost a lot of my expected value if I can then be felled by one neck chop. If they trip and I disarm them, that was just the expected outcome anyway. They start from 10 percent so a swing like that doesn't matter very much.
Like think about playing chess against Magnus Carlsen. If I can choose between both of us being well rested or exhausted, I will choose the latter, because me playing at my best does not matter one iota if he is playing at a mediocre level. I have a much better chance if we're both exhausted precisely because the disadvantage is not symmetrical based on our starting positions and expected values.
I agree their ability to kill is inferior, I don't agree with your initial comment that seemed to mock the very idea that a girl with a bladed weapon can be a threat to an adult man. 10% chance of death or maiming is quite high, as you seem to acknowledge. I also would not want to confront an unarmed and violent adult man.
Sure, if the alternative is leaving your own kids to be attacked, then seems like a good recommendation. Doesn't seem wise for a stranger to intervene as others were suggesting unless there's imminent threat to other vulnerable people
I didn't posit an alternate setting to align with my goals. I posited a setting where you could plausibly trip on a rock as you go towards this assailant to dearm them.
I just don't know what to say if you think this is a totally contrived, imaginary scenario that I made up to align with my goals. People trip on rocks or stumble or something equivalent all the time, especially in surprising, violent situations.
Can you explain why this is suddenly an alternate setting that I've contrived? What about this is so unbelievable?
The understanding of potential damage which I have already set out should be clear. I of course do not mean that every swing is equivalent in direct strength. That would be absurd.
Edit: also, 90% chance of success is a fascinating statistic. You're telling me that a grown man has a 10% chance of failing (which means what, death, being irreversibly injured, the kid escapes, what?) and yet they should be completely confident and have little qualms about this confrontation because the potential damage is negligible. Do you routinely take approximate 10% chances on your life or well-being?
cartman
3mo ago
Yes, I suppose if you ignore all of the complexity and randomness that arises in a real confrontation, then I guess the risk is basically zero. Strong beats weak 100% of the time apparently.
Are you intentionally being hyperbolic or do you really not see any spectrum at all between being "a passive slab of meat" and strolling up and disarming the child with strong adult hands with absolutely zero fear or injury like a badass?
If you would like to assign numbers to your unearned confidence, what rate of adult deaths or serious injury in these confrontations would you accept as presenting a credible risk?
cartman
3mo ago
Yes, no, yes.
All it takes is 1 bad swing or stab. Any bladed weapon at all is a huge equalizer.
You might say your odds of not dying are overall quite high as compared to a knife wielding adult man. Sure, but the difference in potential damage is not that significant, as differences in strength are more than made up for by weapons.
Yes, no, yes. Agree or disagree: a 12 year old can inflict a fatal axe wound in 1 swing on an adult. If the adult wasn't aware or stood still and did nothing, and the 12 year old is truly murderous, this seems entirely plausible to me. Agree or disagree?
Extrapolating from there, even if the adult is actively engaged in the confrontation, any confrontation where one bad swing at your neck after you stumble on a rock or whatever will kill you is not where you want to be, even if your odds are overall quite good. Hence why I call the potential damage significant. I see very little difference in the potential damage that can be inflicted.
Having any bladed weapon at all is the real equalizer here
cartman
3mo ago
I think this is a terrible recommendation for someone who is bothered by this behaviour.
Regardless of whether the police are more armed than you or not, I think it should be fairly self explanatory why there are both legal and practical reasons why it's preferable for the police to deal with this situation, again, assuming it bothers you. They have legal authority, there may be multiple of them, and the assailant will likely respond differently to them than a random stranger.
You haven't actually explained, why "should you" deal with it yourself? You open yourself up to legal liability. You invite the risk of being harmed in an escalation of the conflict. The only benefit I can see is that you can potentially dearm the assailant faster than the authorities can get there and do so. But if they're so minor of a threat anyway in your eyes, then that doesn't matter very much. So what is the upside?
Also, you are equivocating between the damage a 12 year old can do against an adult man who is already facing and confronting her vs the absolute damage they can do. If this person is waving an axe around people in public threatening them, I think it's totally reasonable to have a valid concern they might hurt someone more vulnerable.
I also think that while you're probably right in a lot of situations it only ever takes one or two unlucky swings/stumbles for the underdog to win. I don't agree that the threat is so minimal as to be essentially ignored
Can I assume no evidence will be forthcoming?
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