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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   36197 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022

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Okay, you get some slack because of our unofficial, unwritten policy of being more lenient with people giving mods shit than non-mods (even when they are arguing with a mod who is speaking in a non-mod capacity) but directly calling someone a liar is always going to cross the line unless you can unambiguously prove that the person you're accusing is in fact lying. From my perspective, what you have here is a failure to communicate. I don't doubt you genuinely believe that @ymeskhout is a liar. However, I do doubt that @ymeskhout believes he is a liar.

The reason I call him lying now, but not before, is specifically because he specifically (and has repeatedly) quotes a post (the May21 post and thread) that says why I no longer provide him with sources, and then claims I provide him no reason, but also that my reason is something else. This is not the first time he's pulled this particular phrasing (not my job to educate you) either, or the first time it's been clarified that, no, the reason is in what he is quoting. He then repeats the same claim, and the same wonderment, at the next opportunity.

The first time could be a misinterpretation (hence why it was initially described as a flaw), the second time a miscommunication, the third even a sloppy strawman, but after the fourth or fifth exchange of a saved post being re-raised in the right way it ceases to be credible that it's accidental. Consistent misrepresentation of text and position, especially after multiple clarification, indicates will.

The charge of lying, to be clear, is specially for how he uses the May 21 quote chain he keeps on hand. I do not consider his flaw of conflating different conversations into a single narrative to be a lie, just a flaw, except when it engages in willful misrepresentation of the specified quoting.

I am not going to dig through all of your back-and-forths line by line to extract the exact phrase that you contend was a willful mistatement of the truth (and for which I would then have to dig through probably two years of previous conversations in order to render judgment on whether it is in fact a lie).

No need, since the lie accusation specific to this week, but I understand (and agree with) the premise behind this decision. I, too, would prefer (/expect/respect) focusing on behavioral trends rather than re-litigate past months of packed weeks of material.

Which is ironically relevant to this dispute, since demands to relitigate past months of culture war exchanges was one of the points that led to the assessment he cites.

Here's a very simple rule which we have always enforced: don't make personal attacks. You are certainly verbally adroit enough to get your point across without calling someone a liar, and if that sounds like "You can say you don't think someone is being honest as long as you don't outright call them a liar," that's correct. Attack the position, attack the words, point out what you perceive to be the contradictions. That leaves the ball in the other person's court, and they can then either rebut, clarify, or say nothing and let the audience be the judge.

I understand and accept this chastisement in the spirit it is intended.

I also note that the exchange that started this exchange this week was a response to boo-outgroup remarks that would be personal attacks were the people who'd stopped engaging him still around. (This is where we get the evaporative cooling point from in the separate thread this week, which was not a response as I walked away.)

But your hostility has ticked past the "slightly heated" phase and seems to be entering "personal grudge" territory, so cool it.

I will try, but it would probably help if the mod in question stopped trying to pull saved-quote-jutsu to misrepresent the same saved quote.

I offer the link in the interest of transparency. People can click the link and read it themselves, I'm not hiding the ball. I think it's an illustrative exchange, because you've expressed clear enmity towards me for several years. Again, people can click and read themselves and you can write and explain yourself. Maybe some people will get it, maybe they won't. That's up to them.

I remain surprised by just how much outright hostility and anger I've engendered from you. I try my best to use clear language, precise terminology, links to sources, citations to evidence, et cetera. I have made earnest attempts at reading your posts multiple times and I am here again to say that I do not understand your positions. I think the clarifying questions I ask are simple enough, and you've either refused to answer them or you have and I'm just incapable of understanding them.

On the specific topic of 2020 elections, I've engaged with motteposting and shakesneer and others various times over the years. Even when I maintain my disagreements, I rarely walk away completely befuddled from what they've written. I have no explanation for why your posts are so inscrutable to me, but they are. It's up to you to choose if this continues to be a worthwhile use of your time.

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