RE: Tolerance for Dissent on Extropians

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Aug 04 2001 - 16:02:23 MDT


Joe Dees scorches

> There is, on this list, a roaming pack of socioculturally ludditic
> conservatives poorly disguised as libertarians, who routinely practice
> collective rugby scrum pile-on attacks on anyone they suspect might have
> possibly put forward something possessing the slightest whiff of the items
> Michael Wiik enumerates. These are the people who tend to impart a rather
> self-contradictory flavor to what is advertized as a forward-looking list, and
> are responsible for some progressives feeling that they have to keep their
> membership and participation here a 'dirty little secret', and for some others
> not tarrying long. Their jihadically intolerant take-no-prisoners blatantly
> memebotic scorched-earth warfare pogram has the unfortunate result of skewing
> the median, or at least the most vociferously and frequently enunciated,
> opinion of this list to a point somewhere between John Birch and William Pierce.

Oh for heaven's sake, Joe. In most cases that I've seen, those
pile-on "attacks" have merely been *many* people expressing their
take.

AND TALK ABOUT TAKING NO PRISONERS. Look at what you wrote, Joe.
Now honestly, do you not perceive that---even in the slightest
way---your criticism could just as easily be directed at your
own post? May we not lower the level of denunciation just a
little *here*---just for a while (I'm not calling for complete
elimination of denunciation, by any means).

>>And Joe Dees believes that soon Eric will be accused of being
>>a troll. This is completely incorrect, if not paranoid. Very
>>few people are accused of being trolls, and none are who provide
>>reasoned discourse (such as Eric is doing).
>>
> I did not make the statement in question to Eric. However, I have been
> accused, by those trolling for progressives to slander, of trolling for retros
> to hand a reaming. Such sellf-righteous-wing people seem to have a highly
> developed sense of psychological projection which proves to be rootless with
> respect to logical coherency or factual reality.

Let's count the emotionally loaded words in this. (First, you *were*
warning Eric about the libertarians on this list, I was not in error.)
Okay. 1 - by those trolling 2 - slander 3 - "sellf-righteous-wing"
(I think that Joe means right-wing). And then there is the statement
about his adversaries being (or projecting) logical incoherence and
not being rooted in factual reality. Your typos would diminish if
you became less emotional in all of this; you are among friends, I
assure you.

(I will omit the part of Joe's post alluding in a sense
that I did not entirely follow---and didn't attend to
very much, I confess---to people mailbombing him off
some list or other.)

>>And what the devil is this "accuse" you of being a "socialist"?
>>That's making it sound as though being a socialist or having
>>some socialist beliefs is a necessarily reprehensible view, or
>>as though criticisms of those with socialist beliefs were
>>devoid of real substance (but consisted only name-calling).

> I understand what the person was saying even though I did not type the comment;
> this particular extremist clique uses words like 'liberal', 'socialist',
> 'collectivist', etc., or the more vague yet ominous "I know what you are", as
> if once they invoke these supposed curses, the person to whom they apply or
> misapply them is magically discovered, discredited and defeated.

Yes! Good, right! I have seen libertarians do exactly what you
say. They'll effectively dismiss arguments and posters by sentences
containing such terms *without* supplementing those phrases by
rational explanation. But then, on the other hand, some people
write things like "socioculturally ludditic conservatives", etc.
So, you see, it happens from all quarters.

>> No one should expect to voice any view that is not subject to
>> criticism, and to sometimes powerful, convincing, and yes,
>> embarrassingly accurate criticism. It's the price that should
>> be gladly paid in the free exchange of ideas.
>
> At least I am often granted the amusement of receiving
> misapplied and ineffectual ad hominem epithets as if they
> actually said something about me rather than about their posters.

Um, sorry. What is your meaning here? Did you think that that
statement was directed at you alone? (JUST ASKING! No implication!)
Or were you referring to the general situation where you are
amused by the name-calling people do to you?

Thanks,
Lee



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