[blackzoid]

And I'd like to know if you can read. Please quote exactly, where I was in favour of 100% free speech.
Or to save us all time, why dont you Goodwin the thread and say that I'm in favour of saying to Jews/African Americans that they should all be put in death camps and shot. Go on, you want to type it. Its an itch.

This post has been edited by blackzoid: 30 October 2014 - 03:59 PM

[Illuyankas]

Yeah yeah I'm the evil commie SJW or whatever. Are you in favour of 95% free speech? 87%? 50%? What level? What laws are you against and what laws do you think right? Yelling fire in a cinema? Anonymously messaging professionals in your field and accusing them of bigotry over a decade? What?

[blackzoid]

To be honest I dont know. I'm not sure anyone knows.

Fire in a cinema: Dont know. Should the person be jailed? Probably not.
Anonymously messaging professionals in your field and accusing them of bigotry over a decade: Dont know. Should the person be jailed? Probably not. Should you be obligated to buy their books. No. Campaign against her? No.

Whats that? 85%? (and how absurd to put a number on a social construct like "free speech")

EDIT: Whats a SJW?

This post has been edited by blackzoid: 30 October 2014 - 04:07 PM

[QuickTidal]

SJW = Social Justice Warrior

[Illuyankas]

The fire in a cinema example is an extreme example, since people have been trampled to death in the panic caused. I'd be satisfied with someone being jailed as a result of causing a death in such a way, as a gauge on my take on this. If someone's doing a consistant and organised online campaign of harassment lasting over ten years but doesn't do things like issue death threats or other already illegal acts, reporting them to the police and getting them a warning or similar (IANAL etc) would be legally as far as I'd go but I wouldn't dismiss people boycotting that person or publicising their antisocial activities, because it's abuse in the spirit if not already the letter. People boycotting Orson Scott Card for campaigning against gay rights is a good example here. Also the percent stuff is just riffing off you saying 100%, it's obviously an abstract comparision.

e: people are using SJW to refer to both the strident strawman Tumblr 'all male-initiated sex is rape' 90% false account nutters, and the actual activists campaigning for equality and so on, it's a good way to tell if someone is a stupid asshole if they use it unironically.

This post has been edited by Illuyankas: 30 October 2014 - 04:19 PM

[amphibian]

What is a "campaign against her?"

Why is naming and shaming a bad thing in this context?

There's been no visible harassment of her (hopefully it isn't taking place backstage/by e-mail) and her Twitter/blog are free of negative/harassing talk in a way that I think doesn't suggest heavy moderation/spamming of her. I've even done a Twitter search of her handle, her name and her aliases and honestly, 99.9% of the talk on Twitter about it that I can see is respectful of her personal safety, doesn't discuss anything other than her conduct/words and is almost always even-handed.

[polishgenius]

amphibian, on 30 October 2014 - 04:19 PM, said:

What is a "campaign against her?"

Why is naming and shaming a bad thing in this context?

There's been no visible harassment of her (hopefully it isn't taking place backstage/by e-mail) and her Twitter/blog are free of negative/harassing talk in a way that I think doesn't suggest heavy moderation/spamming of her. I've even done a Twitter search of her handle, her name and her aliases and honestly, 99.9% of the talk on Twitter about it that I can see is respectful of her personal safety, doesn't discuss anything other than her conduct/words and is almost always even-handed.

Yeah, it's interesting how much this whole thing has characterised by a total failure of the mob to sink to her level. It's refreshing, especially after 'gamergate' made me embarrassed to be a user of the internet.



Also: I totally fail to see how freedom of speech has anything to do with what's going on here. Her freedom isn't being impeded in any way by this. No-one's stopping her saying the same horrible bullshit she was doing under her real name if she wants to.

[QuickTidal]

Yeah, anything we've seen in public has either been dismissive (Lawrence, and Abercrombie both seem to have just ignored with a blithe comment or two), supportive (her friends, some other authors like Kam Hurley), or just reactive (What's going on? Oh, that person is that person? Wow.)

And yeah no one is really sinking to the level of vitriol that she employed herself.

[Gorefest]

Hear hear. Freedom of speech doesn't come in to this, she can still say whatever she likes. I think what is being mixed up here is the concept of (internet) anonimity as a core requirement for personal protection (for instance, it may allow whistleblowers to speak out against malpractice, or individuals speaking out against oppressive regimes etc) versus anonimity as a way to shield yourself from (rightful) disdain and even prosecution. In this particular case, we are not talking of someone using anonimity to voice valid concerns that would otherwise potentially never be voiced; a better analogy here would be wearing a ski mask while robbing a bank to avoid camera identification.

This post has been edited by Gorefest: 30 October 2014 - 04:39 PM

[acesn8s]

blackzoid, on 30 October 2014 - 04:05 PM, said:

To be honest I dont know. I'm not sure anyone knows.

Fire in a cinema: Dont know. Should the person be jailed? Probably not.
Anonymously messaging professionals in your field and accusing them of bigotry over a decade: Dont know. Should the person be jailed? Probably not. Should you be obligated to buy their books. No. Campaign against her? No.

Whats that? 85%? (and how absurd to put a number on a social construct like "free speech")

EDIT: Whats a SJW?

Personally I would have to default to the laws for harassment, public disturbance, terroristic threats, etc.

[Morgoth]

blackzoid, on 30 October 2014 - 02:55 PM, said:

Morgoth, on 30 October 2014 - 01:55 PM, said:

The right on the scale? Are we seperating this into political divides now? If that is the direction from which you are approaching this debate I fear the main issue here is that you do not fully understand what freedom of speech is.

Incidentally, being an asshole is a moral "crime" in most cultures I would think, though rarely a legale crime. Or do you claim to come from a place where being an asshole is considered a neutral, or even positive, description?

I'm not really wanting to get into this but ya, I meant "right" as in the left-right political divide. (Or being more down if you use that political compass authoriterian/liberterian angle)

Let me just summarise the ensuing coming argument in order to save us lots of time, as I sense that you seem to want to argue against someone and are starting to go down the path of putting words in my mouth (claiming to come from a place etc)

1: Yes, I do include Full Freedom of Speech as being inclusive of Hate Speech and insults/assholeishness. I presume (and correct me if I am wrong), you disagree. Full freedom of speech as never been enacted in any society as that society would then fall apart (probably). So we have horse-trading of rights vis-a-vis free speech versus bullying. And not everyone agrees on where those limits are set.

2: No, I dont believe been an asshole should be a moral crime in most cultures. You disagree.

3: I dont believe that shaming (or shaming as an offensive tactic in general) of assholes is a good thing if the crime is not at a full "legal" level. You (I presume) disagree.

We are probably not going to change each other's opinions on this. So lets agree to disagree.

I'm assuming you're American? I find it difficult to fathom why you felt the need to make this a political question when inherently it is nothing of the sort. Is it really so important to you to separate people into some arbitrary right left divide?

I don't understand from where in this thread you get you idea as to my political stance. I am a firm believer in freedom of speech and absolutely feel there should be as few legal barriers to speech as is possible while still retaining a functioning society. To many my views on freedom of speech might seem extreme. However, that's hardly relevant to this thread as we're not discussing law (I probably do that enough here as it is, to the annoyance of many). We're discussing morals. The thing with freedom of speech is that it makes no moral judgements, and moral judgements do not touch upon freedom of speech, as long as they are not translated into law that is. So when people start talking about freedom of speech like you have done in this thread I assume you're not fully aware of what freedom of speech is, or perhaps more correctly, what freedom of speech is not.

To be honest I also struggle to fully grasp what you mean when you say there should be no shaming. I mean, a person has the right to be an asshole. In most countries of the world there are no limits to that. However, equally people have the right to say that someone else is an asshole too. When you say shaming, do you mean for instance a situation where I tell amphibian that Illy is an asshole. Is that shaming? If so, why is Illy's right to be spared being called an asshole more important than my right to tell amphibian? Both instances are speech. Organising a campaign is speech. Organising a boycot is speech. If I believe that Illy's level of asshole is so massive it might one day collapse onto itself and create a black hole and ending life as we know it, shouldn't I be well within my rights to tell as many people as I can?

So, help me understand. Why should Illys right to speech be protected by stifling mine?

In addition, the phrase moral crime is daft. Our society believes it's morally wrong to be an asshole. From your unwillingness to respond to that directly I'm assuming you realise that as well. I also think that's a good thing, you seemingly do not. Which baffles me, but alright. We're all different. Though to be honest. I don't really believe that you feel that way either. If the people around you were assholes you'd react in the same way that most people do. With annoyance or disgust. If someone was being an asshole to you, you'd tell that person to stop.

This post has been edited by Morgoth: 30 October 2014 - 07:49 PM

[Illuyankas]

Well that explains who paid for the plane banner saying 'ILLY IS AN ANUSINGULARITY' flying overhead this week.

[Morgoth]

He offered me a month for the price of a week. It was impossible to say no.

[blackzoid]

Morgoth, on 30 October 2014 - 07:47 PM, said:

I'm assuming you're American? I find it difficult to fathom why you felt the need to make this a political question when inherently it is nothing of the sort. Is it really so important to you to separate people into some arbitrary right left divide?

I don't understand from where in this thread you get you idea as to my political stance. I am a firm believer in freedom of speech and absolutely feel there should be as few legal barriers to speech as is possible while still retaining a functioning society. To many my views on freedom of speech might seem extreme. However, that's hardly relevant to this thread as we're not discussing law (I probably do that enough here as it is, to the annoyance of many). We're discussing morals. The thing with freedom of speech is that it makes no moral judgements, and moral judgements do not touch upon freedom of speech, as long as they are not translated into law that is. So when people start talking about freedom of speech like you have done in this thread I assume you're not fully aware of what freedom of speech is, or perhaps more correctly, what freedom of speech is not.

To be honest I also struggle to fully grasp what you mean when you say there should be no shaming. I mean, a person has the right to be an asshole. In most countries of the world there are no limits to that. However, equally people have the right to say that someone else is an asshole too. When you say shaming, do you mean for instance a situation where I tell amphibian that Illy is an asshole. Is that shaming? If so, why is Illy's right to be spared being called an asshole more important than my right to tell amphibian? Both instances are speech. Organising a campaign is speech. Organising a boycot is speech. If I believe that Illy's level of asshole is so massive it might one day collapse onto itself and create a black hole and ending life as we know it, shouldn't I be well within my rights to tell as many people as I can?

So, help me understand. Why should Illys right to speech be protected by stifling mine?

In addition, the phrase moral crime is daft. Our society believes it's morally wrong to be an asshole. From your unwillingness to respond to that directly I'm assuming you realise that as well. I also think that's a good thing, you seemingly do not. Which baffles me, but alright. We're all different. Though to be honest. I don't really believe that you feel that way either. If the people around you were assholes you'd react in the same way that most people do. With annoyance or disgust. If someone was being an asshole to you, you'd tell that person to stop.

1: I'm not a US citizen. I'm Irish
2: I never wanted to get into a huge debate. Hence the "agree to disagree" thing.
3: I am not on this persons side. I went to her site before and she struck me as a sad individual. She seemingly hated people like me, white,male,straight etc. I didnt condemn her out of hand, I tried to understand her point of view, principally from when Larry posted about her. And no, I didnt bother doing an exhaustive check on all that she posted. Just the use of the word "outing" really really didnt sync well with me. And the "name and shame" connotations I dislike. I just had thoughts of potential internet stalking happening to her now and that 2 wrongs dont make a right. So as someone who has done stupid things (not 10 years worth) I thought of compassion towards her. And not justice.

So as regards, moral crimes, freedom of speech, campaigns, assholeishness and whatever, I am not going to expand on this further if it involves me having to write a wall of speech and then you/otehrs writing subsequent reply and then me having to respond to them. Nowdays, I hate been sucked into internet debates in general because people (in my experiance) rarely change their minds. You can construe that as me running away and refusing to debate your points if you wish (which were well argued, especially legal versus morality and I do apologise if I pigeon-holed your political beliefs into something that they are not). So one last time: lets agree to disagree (and I'm out of the thread). Good luck all.

[Gnaw]

Illuyankas, on 30 October 2014 - 04:16 PM, said:

The fire in a cinema example is an extreme example, since people have been trampled to death in the panic caused.

That's not as accurate as most people assume. It turns out that in modern industrialized countries people simply aren't as afraid of fire as they used to be. And maybe not as much as anyone has ever thought.

Take the famous Coconut Grove nightclub fire in 1942. Basement club. The stairwell leading out was choked with bodies with more in a fan pattern out from the doorway leading to the stairs. Everyone always assumed panic occurred. But a forensic pathologist in the early 90s took a fresh look at the data. If there was a panic, the people in the stairwells would be the young and healthy, while those deepest in the club would be older, frailer. The data showed the exact opposite. Women and older folks in the stairs and closest to the door. The bodies on the outside of the fan pattern (deepest in the club) were employees and soldiers/sailors.

This has been a public service announcement, please return to your regularly scheduled flame war.

[Nicodimas]

Quote

The stairwell leading out was choked with bodies with more in a fan pattern out from the doorway leading to the stairs.

Also in this fire..The doors opened inward..not outward. Creating a choke point as people "crowd" the door..hard to open said door for certain.

No exit signs were labeled.

You can't have bars/chains on doors for emergency reasons making the door unable to open.

Not enough doors...

* Interesting fact in a emergency the majority of people will leave the way they entered.... Find a emergency door when your at a concert/etc and know your escape route if the place decides to burn down.

This post has been edited by Nicodimas: 01 November 2014 - 09:14 PM

[Morgoth]

So Peter Watts wrote a blog post about this thing.

http://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=5370

So yeah, this person was basically evil and the people hanging around as some sort of weird posse fan club should be ashamed.

[Amaryl]

I don't understand this discussion regarding blackzoid, his points are pretty clearly lined up, as is his line.

Being an Asshole is okay.

Condeming an asshole for being an asshole for everyone to see everywhere is not.


Personally I think it is good that an asshole is outed, and pointed out. Mainly this is so that hopefully the asshole will come to see the error's of his/her ways and that he/she will repent. The problem with removing the shield of anonymity in my eyes is this: If i'm an asshole to people IRL, I'll eventually get my comeuppance. Which is totally fair and after that or a year or two I change, and become a nonasshole. From this point forth - every new contact will know me as the nonasshole and will be unburdened by my assholishness, it might come up in discussions how I was previously, but i'm not an asshole. On the internet however, a post made in 2006, that I read in 2014, is that same as a post I made in 2014. To the new people i'm trying to connect with, i'm an asshole, because that is a large part of my profile. I cannot change that, I cannot grow out of it. I cannot be me now, without the crap I did years ago still representing me as i am now. Yeah, In real life i'll still be an asshole to everyone I was an asshole to those bridges are burnt. But on the internet i'm pre-emptively burning bridges with people i haven't been in contact with. And I believe that's something worth considering.

We all do stupid things, we all have our teenage years where we have silly opinions about things we don't know much about, but proclaim with absolute certainty. in middleschool we could be stupid bullies and idiots and mean and cruel, but we learn from life, or atleast we should learn from life. we learn to be better. 30 year old me will not be the same as 40 year old me, nor will he be the same as 50 year old me. heck 25 year old me isn't the same as 22 year old me by a large margin. If I talk to people in real life - They see my age, my complexion, my tone and my stupidity, and years later they are able to parse that information. Online all you see is my stupidity and my name, and as such it is very difficult to make this distinction that i've changed.

And I know this made me realize something at least. I'm glad that my first internet experience was in the late 90s early 00s where anonymity was a given. And I dread how the current Facebook generation will be judged about their stupid years. One thing is clear, you need to be vary what you post online, from the very beginning. There should be room to be called an asshole and outed as one and to undergo the consequences, but there should also be the ability to move past, past transgressions and the internet isn't at a place where that can happen.

[Illuyankas]

The burden of proof that she is no longer an asshole is on her, though. If she can't reply to 'she drove at least one person to attempt suicide during her anonymous campaign of vile threats against her competition' with 'here's a list of statements repudiating my older hate-filled posts' at the least, why should we assume she's changed at all and not just thrown out an insincere sorry-I-was-caught post?

[Morgoth]

Besides, I am now able to avoid giving money to this vile person. Had her anonymity remained intact I might very well have bought her books at some point.