Rules update: new policy (#10) and its immediate implementation

Nevertheless, ----- is more important to me than the principle of participatory decision-making.

If that is unacceptable to the community, then alternative possibilities can be floated.

@Laird. I've always believed in cooperation rather than confrontation. It seems right now you are deliberately choosing confrontation, which is not only an act of self-harm towards yourself but seems like a deliberate burning-down of the whole of this site.

I think you should reconsider. As one of the few remaining founding members I do have responsibility for what happens here, even those things which are not initiated by myself. It is not a one-person show, or it hasn't been until now. I feel only too strongly the weight of a quote which I first heard from Dr Arthur Guirdham, though he may not have been its originator:

"The tragedy of life is that people become what they oppose".

@InterestedinPsi,

George Bush and Dick Cheney are/were war criminals responsible for brutal, unconscionable wars of aggression for which they should be / should have been prosecuted and jailed for life. Support for them in that context is support for serious harm in the context of this policy.

In that sense, they are no different in effect in terms of this policy than the current president.

Policy aside, in a qualitative sense the difference between them and Donald Trump (second administration) is that domestically they at least respected democratic institutions and the democratic transfer of power, and governed to some extent with the welfare of their citizens at heart. In other words, domestically, their administration had redeeming features that this one categorically does not.

Fascism is not new. We know how it goes. I don't need to point out the incredible harm that would ensue if the world's superpower descends into fascism.

As I wrote in the opt-in forums, I think the US institutions (and citizenry) will withstand the assault. That doesn't justify supporting it anyway. Deep, long-lasting damage will have been done even if democracy holds.

Regarding responsibility for atrocities, numerical comparisons like this are tawdry, gross, and beside the point, but I want to point out anyway that your claim is arguable, and the administration hasn't even finished its first year:


It's also worth pointing out that the current US president is not potentially the most popular living politician - not even in the USA.

Anyway, please let's drop the politics in discussing this policy going forward, to the extent that we can. Strictly, it belongs in the opt-in forums, at least while they remain open.

My point is to take issue with your very dubious understanding of the range of "ordinary political opinion," not argue the merits of specific political views in themselves.

>tawdry, gross, and beside the point

It's quite relevant given your (plainly irrational) attempt to render support for a very popular public figure a manifestation of political extremism. Providing examples of how awful unambiguously "mainstream politicians" are is useful for perspective taking here.

>Support for them in that context is support for serious harm in the context of this policy.

OK, so supporting politicians who are responsible for brutal atrocities is OK, as long as one specifically fails to support the brutal atrocities they inflicted? This is an interesting attempt to get around the more absurd implications of this new policy.

>your claim is arguable

More arguable than I realized, conceded. What you raise is unfortunately not sufficient to put Trump in a special category of "beyond mainstream" moral evil relative to Cheney, Bush, and a whole host of others.

>the current US president is not potentially the most popular living politician

This is for "Q3 2025" alone and, even with a source likely biased against him, he's still in the top 15. Hardly an argument for Trumpism as some shocking extremist view outside the range of "ordinary political opinion."

Anyway, with the requests for account deletion that have just come in here, and the more or less universally negative reception of this new policy, I think it's pretty obvious that what you've done is on the verge of killing off this forum. If that's not enough to convey how silly this move was, I'm not sure what will be.

@Laird @Ninshub may we have a means of downloading our forum threads and comments history? (Excluding DM's for privacy reasons of both parties, perhaps?)

Alex seemed to believe he was taking principled stands. It's one of the reasons I feel no ill-will towards him despite my being banned.

I would offer the founders something of a counter-proposal, or rather an amendment:

1. Delete the Opt-In Forums.

2. Anyone who made posts - as they were invited to do - in those forums that did not violate prior rules should not be under threat of banning.

3. Our policies should be made clear to anyone joining. I myself would like some clarity on this because it seems right now that we would ban any Trump supporter should they reveal themselves? Anyone who takes the side of, say, Russian or Israel in current conflicts?

I agree with this very much. I mean consider other forums - electronics forums, knitting forums, fractal forums, etc. I'm pretty sure such forums would simply consider politics to be irrelevant - as it should be here.

Removing a post because it strays into something irrelevant is much easier to do in an unbiased fashion.

David

There is also a possibility to create a clear and specific list of topics that are not supposed to be discussed on this forum, so that anyone would be aware in advance which discussions are welcome here and which are not.

To make it clear: on this forum, I NEVER discussed the topics that, as I could easily predict, would be too infuriating and distressing for most members.

And the only reason I ever talked in the political debate which started all this debacle was the direct Laird's appeal to me and others - specifically, David and Jim Smith - to share our views, which I did. Otherwise, I kept my mouth shut on this topic, in order not to provoke hostility and division.

It is still possible to prevent this forum from sharing the sad fate of Skeptiko, by reversing the latter mistaken "rule" and, instead, simply asking members to refrain from some precisely defined topics that have potential to ignite a forum-threatening conflict.

[Laird]

A combined response:

Hi, please delete my account ASAP. Thank you.

Can't see a way to self-delete. Please delete my account.

Done.

@Laird. I've always believed in cooperation rather than confrontation. It seems right now you are deliberately choosing confrontation

I far prefer cooperation to confrontation, but this is also far from the first time I've chosen the latter.

which is not only an act of self-harm towards yourself

My experience of standing on principle is in contrast self-empowering. If the forum is lost, then I would of course feel it personally, but even then the stand would have been worth it.

but seems like a deliberate burning-down of the whole of this site.

My intent is not to burn down the site, but I was (we all were) aware of the risk of that eventuality.

I think you should reconsider. As one of the few remaining founding members I do have responsibility for what happens here, even those things which are not initiated by myself. It is not a one-person show, or it hasn't been until now.

I think reiteration and expansion serve better than reconsideration:

I gave the other remaining founders the option of having me leave and them take over the running of the board if they were in serious opposition to this new policy.

I open that option up to the community as a whole. If the community rejects this policy but wishes the forums to continue, then it's welcome to nominate somebody to take over the hosting and software maintenance, and I'll help to migrate it, and then leave you all to it. Of course, you (@Typoz) and @Ninshub as the remaining active founders would have to be part of or at least endorse that collective decision too.

I'll defer the implementation of the policy until it's clear whether or not the community wants to take that path.

I feel only too strongly the weight of a quote which I first heard from Dr Arthur Guirdham, though he may not have been its originator:

"The tragedy of life is that people become what they oppose".

Well, I'm not exactly inciting a rabid crowd to storm the server and hang MariaDB. A peaceful, democratic transfer of power is perfectly fine by me.

My point is to take issue with your very dubious understanding of the range of "ordinary political opinion,"

It seems though that you yourself have misunderstood what I meant by that. I did not mean "ordinary" in the mere sense of "popular" or "mainstream". Plenty of brutal dictators and warmongers (and, by transference, their political opinions) have been popular and even mainstream, at least in their own countries or among their own bases and during their own times, despite being extraordinarily harmful.

Obviously, in context, the latter is much more relevant to the scale I was referencing. This should have been clear from (but at least is implicit in) my qualification "although harmful enough" re the "ordinariness" of "trickle-down economics" and "immigrants are taking our jobs" political opinions.

OK, so supporting politicians who are responsible for brutal atrocities is OK, as long as one specifically fails to support the brutal atrocities they inflicted?

It seems that my choice of words has led to another misunderstanding. Try this instead:

Support for them ingiven that context is support for serious harm in the context of this policy.

What you raise is unfortunately not sufficient to put Trump in a special category of "beyond mainstream" moral evil relative to Cheney, Bush, and a whole host of others.

My point is simply that whereas in the two statements...

"As war criminals (among many other harmful roles), George Bush and Dick Cheney should not be supported, but at least they [list1]"

and

"As a brazenly corrupt narcissistic sociopath (and probably psychopath), pathological liar, racist, misogynist, (court-adjudicated) rapist - likely (as-yet unconvicted) child rapist too but at least protagonist of a cover-up of child sex trafficking - (convicted) fraud, seditious traitor, renderer of innocents to tyrannical overseas prisons and brutalising internal concentration camps, warmonger, and fascist already responsible for hundreds of thousands of needless deaths and much needless economic suffering, and in the process of destroying democracy in his own country (among many other harmful roles), Donald Trump should not be supported, but at least he [list2]"

...list1 could contain something meaningful and significant (at least relative to the second statement), whereas list2 could not, certainly not for his second administration; arguably there might be one or two items for his first administration.

In general, I suggest making a good-faith effort to understand somebody's position before describing it as irrational, absurd, and silly.

@Laird @Ninshub may we have a means of downloading our forum threads and comments history? (Excluding DM's for privacy reasons of both parties, perhaps?)

You can export your own posts here and your private conversations here, however, downloading full threads (i.e., including the posts of others too) is currently only possible one at a time by clicking the "Download Thread" link at the bottom of each thread page (the entire thread is downloaded, not just the posts of the particular page on which the link is clicked).

It's a weird situation we find ourselves in. Really political threads should never have been a thing on this website to begin with, obscure scientific topics and politics are never a good combination. Considering that if you make political threads, controversial opinions will be voiced, I would much prefer people get hit with some warnings, the threads get nuked and that be the end of it rather than removing people from the site entirely.

>"As a brazenly corrupt narcissistic sociopath (and probably psychopath), pathological liar, racist, misogynist, (court-adjudicated) rapist - likely (as-yet unconvicted) child rapist too but at least protagonist of a cover-up of child sex trafficking - (convicted) fraud, seditious traitor, renderer of innocents to tyrannical overseas prisons and brutalising internal concentration camps, warmonger, and fascist already responsible for hundreds of thousands of needless deaths and much needless economic suffering, and in the process of destroying democracy in his own country (among many other harmful roles), Donald Trump should not be supported, but at least he [list2]"

>It seems though that you yourself have misunderstood what I meant by that. I did not mean "ordinary" in the mere sense of "popular" or "mainstream". Plenty of brutal dictators and warmongers (and, by transference, their political opinions) have been popular and even mainstream, at least in their own countries or among their own bases and during their own times, despite being extraordinarily harmful.

>Obviously, in context, the latter is much more relevant to the scale I was referencing. This should have been clear from (but at least is implicit in) my qualification "although harmful enough" re the "ordinariness" of "trickle-down economics" and "immigrants are taking our jobs" political opinions.

>...list1 could contain something meaningful and significant (at least relative to the second statement), whereas list2 could not, certainly not for his second administration; arguably there might be one or two items for his first administration.

Here's the problem. I see "war criminal" and, knowing the actual war crimes for which Bush and Cheney are responsible, and comparing them to your list of complaints about Trump, I still conclude that Bush and Cheney have done worse to mankind. How exactly are we to adjudicate who's in the wrong here, between the two of us? The bottom line is that what constitutes intolerable promotion of harm via support of a politician is determined on the basis of your idiosyncratic whim, rather than widely shared beliefs, e.g. things taken to be matters of common sense, that allow others to reasonably predict what would be unacceptable (e.g. virtually everyone agrees that pedophilia is extremely bad and consequently beyond the pale, so almost no one is surprised to learn that advocating for pedophilia in an online forum is bannable). No one can anticipate that in advance, making this policy fundamentally absurd. The fact that essentially no one else who's still active here, other than the other mod apparently, agrees with your whim, should perhaps be reason for you to think over whether you are actually in possession of the unerring judgment on matters of political morality that you evidently believe yourself to hold. We're also apparently required to take as facts things that are really massively contested but that Laird declares to be fact by fiat: e.g. that Trump is a bona fide "fascist." Please find me one neutral authoritative reference source--a well-regarded encyclopedia, for instance--that classifies Trump as a "fascist" as if this were a definite truth, along with persons uncontroversially given that label such as Mussolini. The Encyclopedia Britannica entry on Trump has exactly one instance of the word "fascist" (no uses of "fascism" or "fascistic" at all), in a sentence describing the views of opponents of Trump: "Protesters denounced Trump as an authoritarian, a fascist, or an aspiring 'king' who posed a grave threat to American democracy."

Apparently we're also supposed to factor into our anticipation of Laird's whim on these matters, mere allegations of wrongdoing! (Trump as "child rapist" and guilty of "cover-up of child sex trafficking.") Do the many allegations of sexual misconduct against, e.g., Bill Clinton that have thus far resulted in no convictions also enter into the ledger? I have to say it's getting harder and harder to make any semblance of rational sense of this policy.

[Laird]

@InterestedinPsi, your lack of comprehension and hostility are not my problem. It's not my role nor obligation to point out the obvious.

If you don't like the policy, then there are options available, both as an individual and as a community member.

[Laird]

It's not my role nor obligation to point out the obvious.

In any case, I'll respond substantively again, but if you continue to be hostile and unreasonable, then this will be my last.

I see "war criminal" and, knowing the actual war crimes for which Bush and Cheney are responsible, and comparing them to your list of complaints about Trump, I still conclude that Bush and Cheney have done worse to mankind. How exactly are we to adjudicate who's in the wrong here, between the two of us?

We don't have to. It's not in dispute that all three have committed serious harms. The question of whose are worse is incidental and not relevant to the policy. [Edit: incidentally, I'm not even claiming what you say I'm claiming. The tangible harm done to mankind by Bush and Cheney especially in terms of lives lost and societies destroyed almost certainly is greater than that done so far by Trump. My point was a different one. I tried made it clear to you, but you seem to have missed it anyway.]

The bottom line is that what constitutes intolerable promotion of harm via support of a politician is determined on the basis of your idiosyncratic whim

It's apparently not so idiosyncratic that you disagree with me, because you essentially agree ("More arguable than I realized, conceded").

I've responded to the rest in the opt-in forums given its political nature.