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DrSebby
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Re:virus: The Ideohazard cum socio-hazard...
« on: 2003-09-29 05:10:52 »
Reply with quote


....i dont know who is responsible for this recent turn of nastiness because
i havent been following this thread.  but is it possible for us to not take
ourselves so seriously that we have to graduate to hate words again?  my
encounters with it long ago left such a bad taste in my mouth that i would
do anything to avoid it.  it has not helped the CoV at all...and the recent
break from it has been refreshing to say the least.  can we not overlook
rudeness and avoid retaliatory verbage?  deserved or not, the CoV as a whole
is the ultimate heir to our abusiveness of any a-holes within her hallowed
halls.


DrSebby.
"Courage...and shuffle the cards".





----Original Message Follows----
From: "Hermit" <virus@hermit.net>
Reply-To: virus@lucifer.com
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: Re:virus: The Ideohazard 1.1
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 17:21:02 -0600

[Hermit 4] <moved from end> But you inspire me. Pity you left it so late in
the article. Had I seen it 6 hours ago, I could have saved 6 hours. grep
'Jonathan Davis'  > /dev/null

[Jonathan 5] Surrender accepted.

[Hermit 6] No surrender given or implied. You received a (full response).
Something you seem incapable of doing. Your statement was not ad hominem,
but is a statement that you have deliberately projected a meaning which
could not be construed from what I said onto my words.

[Jonathan 5] <moved from end> This was written entirely in jest to mock your
style and methods. You may have detected an irreverent tone in this
response. It is the mirth that accompanies insight.

[Hermit 6] I'm not convinced that you have seen a thing. It would excuse me
from replying, only from your past behaviour, I know that you will then make
further invalid assertions about what that meant.

[Hermit 6] As a point of order, ad hominem is short for "argumentum ad
hominem", to "argue against the person." This can be through insult, through
inference, or even through false, or at least unsubstantiated accusations of
debating flaws. I can only engage in ad hominem against the person I am
debating/arguing with. I can say anything about anyone else I wish, and if
it is not true and is malicious, that might be slander, but it cannot be ad
hominem. I try to avoid ad hominem, even when the person I am arguing with
does it repeatedly, until it becomes apparant that they will not learn not
to. Then I respond in kind (if the forum provides no rules against it) or
call for sanctions if it does not. The CoV is a forum where we have recently
instituted such rules. You are verging on the point where I will call for
sanctions against you. As you appear incapable of identifying ad hominem
correctly, the response to you has been made on the BBS and ad hominem
identified in color. T!
o reiterate, please notice that ad hominem can only occur when I talk about
you.

The complete response is located at  [ Hermit, "Re:virus: The Ideohazard
1.1", Reply #56, 2003-09-28 ] 
(http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=54;action=display;threadid=29259;start=45)



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hkhenson@rogers...
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Re:virus: The Ideohazard cum socio-hazard...
« Reply #1 on: 2003-09-29 09:21:58 »
Reply with quote

At 11:10 AM 29/09/03 +0200, you wrote:

>....i dont know who is responsible for this recent turn of nastiness
>because i havent been following this thread.  but is it possible for us
>to not take ourselves so seriously that we have to graduate to hate words
>again?  my encounters with it long ago left such a bad taste in my mouth
>that i would do anything to avoid it.  it has not helped the CoV at
>all...and the recent break from it has been refreshing to say the
>least.  can we not overlook rudeness and avoid retaliatory
>verbage?  deserved or not, the CoV as a whole is the ultimate heir to our
>abusiveness of any a-holes within her hallowed halls.

Unfortunately, flame postings are the bane of the net.  Solving this
problem could possibly give CoV a boost up, or (perhaps as likely) make it
so insipid that nobody bothered to be involved.

Meta analysis:

People are highly rewarded by attention.  (The reason is rooted in our
evolutionary history as social primates in small tribes.  See "Sex, Drugs
and Cults" for details.)

On the net and in some people, the kind of attention, positive/negative is
ignored.  This results in people being rewarded by being flamed--resulting
more provoking, more flame.  People are very often conditioned by the
responses they get in cases where they don't understand it at all.  A
classic example of this is the psych classes that condition a professor to
stay on the left or right edge of a stage during lectures.

The conditioning for attention "rewards" is sometimes so strong that people
will take totally indefensible positions because they are sure to get
responses.  A classic example is (or was) the (in)famous David Sternlight,
but I can think of at least a dozen examples on the
alt.religion.scientology news group over the past 8 years.  There are many
good examples of the power of human minds to rationalize taking an
indefensible position because of the rewarding attention it garners.

*Part* of this is because a well thought out and written post gets few and
sometimes no responses.  It takes a long time and a lot of experience on
the net to understand this, and some people never do get it.

I know there is a strong tendency to comment on postings you consider
incorrect.  But there are times when doing so rewards people who are doing
it to bait others into "rewarding" them.  It is possible for such people to
be recognized and once in a while a group will jointly quit responding to
provokers--who usually move on to another venue because of no rewarding
responses.  It is possibly instructive for meta analysis to look at the
last dozen or two postings on the memetics list and prior to that postings
by "wade."

It will be amusing to see if there are any responses to this post. :-)

Keith Henson

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JD
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RE: virus: The Ideohazard cum socio-hazard...
« Reply #2 on: 2003-09-29 10:00:58 »
Reply with quote

Dear Sebby,

Please don't worry about this spat escalating. It really is just for fun.
The hate words (if any) are certainly not personal. I fully understand that
we are a church have suffered plenty from brutal rows in the past, but this
is not one of those.

I am happy to abandon the topic if it is causing distress to anyone.

Kind regards

Jonathan



-----Original Message-----
From: owner-virus@lucifer.com [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com] On Behalf Of
Dr Sebby
Sent: 29 September 2003 10:11
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: Re:virus: The Ideohazard cum socio-hazard...


....i dont know who is responsible for this recent turn of nastiness because

i havent been following this thread.  but is it possible for us to not take

ourselves so seriously that we have to graduate to hate words again?  my
encounters with it long ago left such a bad taste in my mouth that i would
do anything to avoid it.  it has not helped the CoV at all...and the recent
break from it has been refreshing to say the least.  can we not overlook
rudeness and avoid retaliatory verbage?  deserved or not, the CoV as a whole
is the ultimate heir to our abusiveness of any a-holes within her hallowed
halls.


DrSebby.
"Courage...and shuffle the cards".





----Original Message Follows----
From: "Hermit" <virus@hermit.net>
Reply-To: virus@lucifer.com
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: Re:virus: The Ideohazard 1.1
Date: Sun, 28 Sep 2003 17:21:02 -0600

[Hermit 4] <moved from end> But you inspire me. Pity you left it so late in
the article. Had I seen it 6 hours ago, I could have saved 6 hours. grep
'Jonathan Davis'  > /dev/null

[Jonathan 5] Surrender accepted.

[Hermit 6] No surrender given or implied. You received a (full response).
Something you seem incapable of doing. Your statement was not ad hominem,
but is a statement that you have deliberately projected a meaning which
could not be construed from what I said onto my words.

[Jonathan 5] <moved from end> This was written entirely in jest to mock your
style and methods. You may have detected an irreverent tone in this
response. It is the mirth that accompanies insight.

[Hermit 6] I'm not convinced that you have seen a thing. It would excuse me
from replying, only from your past behaviour, I know that you will then make
further invalid assertions about what that meant.

[Hermit 6] As a point of order, ad hominem is short for "argumentum ad
hominem", to "argue against the person." This can be through insult, through
inference, or even through false, or at least unsubstantiated accusations of
debating flaws. I can only engage in ad hominem against the person I am
debating/arguing with. I can say anything about anyone else I wish, and if
it is not true and is malicious, that might be slander, but it cannot be ad
hominem. I try to avoid ad hominem, even when the person I am arguing with
does it repeatedly, until it becomes apparant that they will not learn not
to. Then I respond in kind (if the forum provides no rules against it) or
call for sanctions if it does not. The CoV is a forum where we have recently
instituted such rules. You are verging on the point where I will call for
sanctions against you. As you appear incapable of identifying ad hominem
correctly, the response to you has been made on the BBS and ad hominem
identified in color. T!
o reiterate, please notice that ad hominem can only occur when I talk about
you.

The complete response is located at  [ Hermit, "Re:virus: The Ideohazard
1.1", Reply #56, 2003-09-28 ]
(http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=54;action=display;threadid=292
59;start=45)



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JD
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RE: virus: The Ideohazard cum socio-hazard...
« Reply #3 on: 2003-09-29 10:02:58 »
Reply with quote

Attention seeker :-)

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-virus@lucifer.com [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com] On Behalf Of
Keith Henson
Sent: 29 September 2003 14:22
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: Re:virus: The Ideohazard cum socio-hazard...


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RE: virus: The Ideohazard cum socio-hazard...
« Reply #4 on: 2003-09-29 11:48:59 »
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[Jonathan Davis]I am happy to abandon the topic if it is causing distress to anyone.

[Mermaid]Please...
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RE: virus: The Ideohazard cum socio-hazard...
« Reply #5 on: 2003-09-29 17:52:25 »
Reply with quote

Consider it abandoned. The points are all long made and people can make up
their own minds.

Kind regards

Jonathan

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-virus@lucifer.com [mailto:owner-virus@lucifer.com] On Behalf Of
Mermaid
Sent: 29 September 2003 16:49
To: virus@lucifer.com
Subject: RE: virus: The Ideohazard cum socio-hazard...


[Jonathan Davis]I am happy to abandon the topic if it is causing distress to
anyone.

[Mermaid]Please...

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rhinoceros
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My point is ...

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Re:virus: The Ideohazard cum socio-hazard...
« Reply #6 on: 2003-09-29 19:39:01 »
Reply with quote

[Keith Henson]
Meta analysis:

People are highly rewarded by attention.  (The reason is rooted in our evolutionary history as social primates in small tribes.  See "Sex, Drugs and Cults" for details.)

On the net and in some people, the kind of attention, positive/negative is ignored.  This results in people being rewarded by being flamed--resulting more provoking, more flame.  People are very often conditioned by the responses they get in cases where they don't understand it at all.  A classic example of this is the psych classes that condition a professor to stay on the left or right edge of a stage during lectures.

<snip>


[rhinoceros]
Thanks for the psychological meta-analysis Keith. The theme of indiscriminate attention rewards does seem to be all around us. But I wonder... isn't it a special case when we have to do with a particular persistent meme which the carrier brings up all the time at all the places he frequents. This is especially annoying when it happens in a group which has taken the oposite position after long discussions, and currently aspires to build on that position. This has happened here many times in the past, with different memes and carriers. Is that Wade peson also stuck with a single persistent memeset?

The remark about answering only to the posts which have an apparent problem is something I had noticed too. Of course, it is easier to reply to something outright wrong or contrary to our belief system. I wonder if we can put some effort to equip our "serious posts" with more explicit and obvious "handles" for the reader.


By the way, I read the #virus IRC chat where you first brought up this meta-analysis. That chat, between Mermaid, Lucifer, and Keith Henson, and goomba, lasted more than 2 hours and was really illuminating. Well worth reading.

http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=;action=chatlog2;channel=%23virus;date=2003-09-28;time=20:00;start=0;max=60

Putting aside the "niceties", one can see 3 very important points of view which will have to be reconciled. As I read it:

Mermaid pointed out the need for group identity, reaching out, and achievement, as opposed to being an introverted community with reputations earned "between us". For this reason, she had some reservations to our recent heavy engagement with rulemaking and to the suggested VirianNames which some may find embarassing.

Lucifer pointed out how the system under development takes care of some of the issues, and he was mostly interested in figuring out how some of the desired goals can be translated to practical measures and encompassed in a better system.

Keith Henson offered some very interesting analysis of what we see here. Part of that was the topic of his post in this thread. He also made a reference to the evolutionary (genetic) base of group dynamics, and suggested a book on "Chimpanzee Politics".

goomba provided the discussion with some feedback on how the younger virians see the process.


I do have some past experience with small and rather introverted groups with big ambitions. Fierce internal struggles and splinterings are very common in this kind of groups. The excuse of "cleansing the group so that we can proceed" was often heard. My explanation for this phenomenon used to be that "the arena is the group itself". The most ambitious members of such a group tend to settle for seeking a reputation not in the big world by means of the group but in the group itself. So, behavioral shortcuts are acceptable, because in a group of 100 persons you can "do calculations" whereas in the big world you can only behave according to the common codes.

This is less common in bigger groups which are already in the "big arena", because real things are in stake there.

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Re:virus: The Ideohazard cum socio-hazard...
« Reply #7 on: 2003-09-29 22:19:46 »
Reply with quote

At 05:39 PM 29/09/03 -0600, you wrote:

>[Keith Henson]
>Meta analysis:
>
>People are highly rewarded by attention.  (The reason is rooted in our
>evolutionary history as social primates in small tribes.  See "Sex, Drugs
>and Cults" for details.)
>
>On the net and in some people, the kind of attention, positive/negative is
>ignored.  This results in people being rewarded by being flamed--resulting
>more provoking, more flame.  People are very often conditioned by the
>responses they get in cases where they don't understand it at all.  A
>classic example of this is the psych classes that condition a professor to
>stay on the left or right edge of a stage during lectures.
>
><snip>
>
>[rhinoceros]
>Thanks for the psychological meta-analysis Keith. The theme of
>indiscriminate attention rewards does seem to be all around us. But I
>wonder... isn't it a special case when we have to do with a particular
>persistent meme which the carrier brings up all the time at all the places
>he frequents. This is especially annoying when it happens in a group which
>has taken the oposite position after long discussions, and currently
>aspires to build on that position. This has happened here many times in
>the past, with different memes and carriers.

I am sorry to say I can't answer your question about a person promoting a
particularly persistent meme counter to the group's consensus.  Has the
person actually been "caught" by the meme or is it a case where the meme's
influence in their brain is largely due to the "rewarding" attention the
person is getting from persistently taking an provocative position?

It is one those questions that to answer would require a far deeper
understanding of internal brain processes than is currently possible.

>Is that Wade peson also stuck with a single persistent memeset?

Yes.  And in his case some people on the list speculated openly that he
didn't believe what he was spouting but was doing it for attention.

>The remark about answering only to the posts which have an apparent
>problem is something I had noticed too. Of course, it is easier to reply
>to something outright wrong or contrary to our belief system. I wonder if
>we can put some effort to equip our "serious posts" with more explicit and
>obvious "handles" for the reader.

That's a really good idea.  You would need people to rate postings though
and that's hard to do.  There might be some way to automate the process.

>By the way, I read the #virus IRC chat where you first brought up this
>meta-analysis. That chat, between Mermaid, Lucifer, and Keith Henson, and
>goomba, lasted more than 2 hours and was really illuminating. Well worth
>reading.
>
>http://virus.lucifer.com/bbs/index.php?board=;action=chatlog2;channel=%23virus;date=2003-09-28;time=20:00;start=0;max=60

I have actually been rapping about this topic for years in other
places.  So if the argument looks fairly polished, well, it has been.  You
can see my starting to grope with the concepts in 1997 here:

http://www.google.ca/groups?q=sternlight+author:Keith+author:Henson&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&scoring=d&selm=hkhensonE66rBv.G0E%40netcom.com&rnum=7

>Putting aside the "niceties", one can see 3 very important points of view
>which will have to be reconciled. As I read it:
>
>Mermaid pointed out the need for group identity, reaching out, and
>achievement, as opposed to being an introverted community with reputations
>earned "between us". For this reason, she had some reservations to our
>recent heavy engagement with rulemaking and to the suggested VirianNames
>which some may find embarassing.
>
>Lucifer pointed out how the system under development takes care of some of
>the issues, and he was mostly interested in figuring out how some of the
>desired goals can be translated to practical measures and encompassed in a
>better system.
>
>Keith Henson offered some very interesting analysis of what we see here.
>Part of that was the topic of his post in this thread. He also made a
>reference to the evolutionary (genetic) base of group dynamics, and
>suggested a book on "Chimpanzee Politics".
>
>goomba provided the discussion with some feedback on how the younger
>virians see the process.
>
>I do have some past experience with small and rather introverted groups
>with big ambitions. Fierce internal struggles and splinterings are very
>common in this kind of groups.

Me too.  Founding the L5 Society in 1975 was my first such experience.  Man
was the politics strange there.  Everything up to and including Lyndon
LaRouche's nut cult infiltrating local chapters in Pennsylvania.  I vividly
remember when Robert Heinlein came down like a ton of bricks on some people
who were trying to subvert the Board of Directors.  (And on some of the
other directors who took accusations against the people running L5 at face
value without investigating the accusations for being truthful.)

Perhaps some of the strangeness in L5 can be ascribed to the people being
technical types (like me) that usually don't get involved with politics and
are not strongly inclined that way.  (A substantial fraction of L5 was
libertarian or leaning that way and you know how good those folks are at
politics.)

Cryonics politics has been very intense at times, usually from outside
attacks.  Those frozen have been kept that way, but a number of potential
patients have been lost due to internal political fights and I expect more
will be.

I think the intensity of politics might be inversely related to how much
real stuff can be done by the group members.

For big agendas . . . I don't think you can get any bigger than transhuman
goals.  They subsume space settlement, nanotechnology, cryonics and
everything else I have been interested in for the last 30 years.  But while
the problems people are working on are small in the physical sense, they
are hard to work on without industrial scale support.  I might post a
proposed method to make large amounts of nanotubes to see if anyone could
do something with it.

>The excuse of "cleansing the group so that we can proceed" was often
>heard. My explanation for this phenomenon used to be that "the arena is
>the group itself". The most ambitious members of such a group tend to
>settle for seeking a reputation not in the big world by means of the group
>but in the group itself. So, behavioral shortcuts are acceptable, because
>in a group of 100 persons you can "do calculations" whereas in the big
>world you can only behave according to the common codes.
>
>This is less common in bigger groups which are already in the "big arena",
>because real things are in stake there.

Hmm.  I could really use examples for what you are discussing in the last
two sentences.

Thanks for the comments.

Keith Henson


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