SBRFS

Well, you seem to have made a wonderful strawman, criticized him as being a collectivist monster, and then soundly defeated him. All in one line, too! Criticizing hyperbole... on FDR...

Kevin, the mechanism may vary slightly, but the theme and outcome are the same: a public reputation (be it a score or just word of mouth), damaged perhaps to the point that sanctions are applied (either by automatic mechanism or by human assumption), and possibly accomplished without provision for correction or restitution (depending on the nature of the implementation, such as courts or forums). So again, anonymous and consequence-free downvoting to a person's reputation in a public space like the Internet is not just a harmless expression of preference.

OK, this somewhat off-topic conversation that I started has now gotten me all riled up, so here goes... Let's look at downvoting in "real life": You may remember that movie that comes on TV once in a while, about the teacher who was falsely accused of molesting his students. When it went to court, his accusors recanted and he was cleared of the charges. Even so, he continued to receive death threats, couldn't get a job, and was basically given the evil eye wherever he went. It drove his mother to the grave, and he ended up killing himself. That was just one of many such incidents where people have found themselves ruined because of a bad reputation, deservedly or not. So please don't suggest that anonymous and consequence-free downvoting to a person's reputation in a public space like the Internet is just a harmless expression of preference.

This is the second time today you seem to have twisted my words into something sinister.But to answer your question, it depends on your perception of what the downvote button is for. If it is indeed as you say, expressing a preference about a particular message, then why do user profiles keep a tally of downvotes? Furthermore, why would too many accumulated downvotes in one's profile cause one's messages to be hidden from all users by default, rather than just the user(s) who downvoted them? The intent is clear: this is a system of "virtual" ostracization, and with it being both anonymous and at-will, it offers potential for a ridiculous amount of abuse.Being able to put a black mark on someone's public record, without even the slightest requirement for evidence or explanation? Are you kidding me? Perhaps I lump all willful malignance in together as "injustice", and that confuses the issue.P.S.: Sorry, MyShadow, if I derailed your thread!

I understand that, and I hope you know that I wasn't saying there was. However, if you care about the person, and there's a chance they are amenable to change, then it is in the best interest of all involved (and to some extent, society at large) to put in the extra effort that might nudge the person into greater understanding and better behavior.

I detest the term "sausage fest". <--- There ya go!

Tsk! Men! (storms off in a huff)

As Songbirdo implies, Person B is free to withdraw at any time. The only solution is to not invite him to further meetings. However, there is a delicate balance between explaining to him why his behavior is unacceptable, and just dumping him. Perhaps you can instead explain to him how it makes you feel when he doesn't follow through, and then if he shows no interest in how you are adversely affected, you will have your answer.

Does the board have a polling feature? Maybe we can find out if that's correct. I answered your question. Perhaps you would like to answer mine, before posing another one to me.

For the same reason I care about somebody getting beaten up in an alley, or being accused of misconduct by an anonymous source, or any other number of tragedies or injustices. Because I have some sense of justice or fair play, and also because I either know, or can imagine, how it feels to be victimized by hidden faces that can't be confronted. I try to stand up against such abuse when I notice it, not just because of personal feelings, but also as a matter of honor. How can anybody not care?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Depersonalization_disorder

I feel that I'm still not understanding your view, so I'll withdraw from the conversation now. Thanks for the discussion.

As of the time of this writing, that post was rated negatively by two points. I'm curious as to why. My best guess is that somebody didn't like the fragment "He is just catering to his audience which is mostly men", yet failed to pair that with the second half of the sentence ("he told us that a few times"). I, too, recall Stef mentioning that latter part in one or more of his shows, so obviously the negative rating cannot be a claim of baseless assertions. The second and third sentences do not appear to be inflammatory, as one just states a mild opinion about whether significant interest does or does not exist, and the second is naught but friendly encouragement to seek out and post the relevant information. What good is a reputation system if there's no clear way for people to know what it is about their posts that is liked or disliked? That just leaves the poster guessing, perhaps afraid to speak out, and certainly vulnerable to baseless sniping. (A while back I wrote to Mike, asking if there was a way to improve the system by requiring that an explanation be required for each rating of a post. He seemed to agree. Presumably, though, the code for the forum does not include such a feature, and it may be some time before it can be implemented.) I would like the raters to explain, specifically, why they down-voted the aforementioned post.

I think the idea you propose is OK, as long as the show's description does not lead people to believe that it provides answers it doesn't. At best, the tactic uses sarcasm to get people thinking, though perhaps at the expense of giving FDR a reputation as being a hit-or-miss source of information; at worst, it unrepentantly wastes people's time when they're looking for genuine advice.

If we only had waterproof keyboards... or maybe just audio recorders?

I was about to the point of "it's too depressing to listen to another tragedy", but then at the half-way mark there was that tidbit about "livestock management". Quite interesting.

But the criteria you use are entirely anthropocentric! You talk about how we can think this way or that, we can practice science and what not, et cetera. All of those are an outgrowth of the intelligence we developed, wheras the other animals have developed equally-impressive traits in other areas. Yet everything that you say qualifies us to be their masters, you place squarely in our camp. It's like a judge deciding what evidence gets to be presented in a case about limiting the power of the judiciary! There are only two possible reasons for humans to have rightful dominion over other animals: either it is our intellectual capacity (whatever criteria you include), or it is the fact that we are homo sapiens sapiens. If the former, then any animal of greater intellgence can rightly dominate one of lower intelligence. If the latter, then we are bigots who, by nature of our genetic inheritance, claim the right to dominate any life form we encounter (regardless of its intellectual capacity). And the average dog has many times the olfactory "vocabulary" of any human child. Why does one type of specialization trump another? You give examples of how one feature of humans is as highly-developed as different features in other animals, and you continue to assert that particular outgrowths of that feature are what gives us some sort of "right" (for lack of a better term) to have our way with them. At least that's how it sounds to me. You ask me to prove that humans and other animals are the same. They are not. Humans are different from donkeys, which are different from tigers. They are all equally adapted to their environments -- the wild for beasts, civilization for humans. Neither their location nor their abilities make any of them morally superior to the others in any way. Humans have no more "right" to cage a tiger than the tiger has a "right" to eat the humans. But at least the tiger can claim ignorance of empathy and morality. Humans, because their development is precisely in those traits, cannot. To kidnap a creature from its natural habitat and force it to live in a place where it has no comprehension of the social norms, is by itself an act of cruelty. If pet owners actually had the empathy they claim to, they would respect the dignity of beasts by leaving them in their natural habitats, and allow the creatures to evolve in their own particular ways.

For the neutering-as-kindness argument to work, there must be a line that differentiates the beast from the thinker. I don't see how it's possible for such a line to exist, seeing as cognition is a sort of spectrum. To have it your way, it would have to be very much like the "day under 18 / day over 18" legality argument, and such binary standards just don't work with a spectrum. I mean, neutering is an all-or-nothing approach, as is "owning" an animal. How are we supposed to deal with animals that are of near-human intelligence? Because the day will come when such creatures exist, be they naturally- or artificially-created. If the current answers don't mesh with the realistic hypothetical example, then perhaps we need to reconsider the validity of the current answers. Edit: And again, your argument seems to be based on "because we're smarter, we're entitled". I don't know how to counter that, but it feels "wrong" somehow.

I agree that humans can have mutually beneficial survival arrangements with other animals, so perhaps our disagreement is on the concept of a "pet". I think your example of the free-range chickens is closest to the ideal situation, with the chickens being free to live their lives without your interference, but also free to partake of your hospitality. When it starts getting more restrictive than that, you're basically creating a pet, and doing so by using the same psychological tactics that human "social predators" do. (I tried to say that in the least inflammatory way I could think of.) Basically, once the animal gets hooked on something you provide -- food, affection, approval -- then you can keep it there by threatening to take the thing away. That's when it becomes manipulative. "Obey me or I shun/starve you, pet." If it's wrong to manipulate a child like that, then it can't be any better to do the same thing with animals of childlike emotional intelligence.

Though I doubt you're arguing against the biology of it, I would like to point out that humans are weaker than other animals in every way, except our minds. We have evolved in the direction of abstract thought, as you say, precisely at the expense of the gorilla's muscles and the cheetah's speed. But to say that humans are "fundamentally different" from other animals, I believe is an exaggeration. It's been a long time coming, but we're finally recognizing that a number of other animals possess near-human level problem-solving ability. Some invent tools to use, some even engage in rudimentary conversation via human sign language. First it was "humans are the only ones to use language", then, when that was proven false, it became "humans are the only ones to use tools". Today, it's been pushed all the way back to the obscure criteria you described -- and still it sounds ridiculously chauvinist of us. Seriously, "knowledge like philosophy and biology" and "the ability to preserve our experiences"? I don't mean to criticize you personally, but surely you can see how similar that argument is to "the god of the gaps". I don't think that follows what I said. I stated that "animals aren't being abused in the wild", which implies that the wild has no ethical standard. But we're talking about deliberately taking animals into human society (or being careless enough to attract them), where there is an ethical standard. Beyond clarifying that, it's hard for me to argue against the rest of your message, as it's still based on the notion that humans are "special", which I still feel is a miscalculation. In any case, though, I think that "fixing" animals is at best a palliative to the problem of overpopulation. I'd much rather see that replaced by a peaceful approach which 1) teaches people not to take animals as pets, 2) makes human communities undesirable to wild animals, and 3) somehow makes domesticated breeds more capable of life without human care.

First, to be clear, just because I may not have the perfect solution, that doesn't mean that my point is invalid or that humans get off scot free. I think humans, being capable of understanding how their behavior may have a disproportionately large influence in the world they share with other creatures, have a responsibility to minimize the disruption they cause. As our technology grows, so will our ability to safely and peacefully carve our habitat out of the wilderness. For example, we might move to the stereotypical glass-domed cities popular in science fiction, or the solution might be something as simple as changing how we dispose of scavenger-attracting garbage. We are all animals, some of us smarter than others. If higher intelligence (or the ability to comprehend philosophy) is what gives some animals a sort of "right" to inflict their desires on the rest, then for the sake of consistency, you must also condone the same surgical practices on mentally retarded humans. Yet, for some reason, most people cringe at the notion of using humans of beast-level intelligence for food stock, scientific experiments, and the like.We can't have it both ways. If intelligence is the determining factor, then we have to treat beasts as respectfully as we do the least capable of humans. But if it is species that determines what ends up on the dinner plate, then it's just another form of bigotry, and I dread to think what will happen when humans eventually encounter (or create) another intelligent life form. And I know humans who were sterilized because their wardens didn't want the headaches associated with unwanted pregnancies. So, let's adapt a page from Stef's book, concerning the way he treats his daughter: If a beast were capable of taking a reasoned look at things, and could reflect on the gonad-free life you forced upon it, versus the experience of raising young, would it thank you for making the decision you did? No human would, so why would you assume different from a non-human?

Oh, I agree that the technologies involved are amazing. Provided we don't find there's some inexplicable "quantum" phenomenon preventing us from uploading our minds, there's a good chance that some of us today could end up living forever. But my post was meant to criticize the perversion of such technology for the purposes of harming one another, and how we must first learn why we react in certain ways before we can choose to put such bestial behavior behind us. No opinions on that aspect of it?

I'm not sure if this is precisely what you're looking for, but I can name a few technology projects that seem to have an anarchist bent: FreedomBox (freedomboxfoundation.org), FreeSpeechMe (freespeechme.org), The Free Software Foundation (fsf.org), and The Free Network Foundation (thefnf.org). Edit: Oh yeah, and me. (Duh!)

What does it matter what I know of cat breeding? I don't see how that even applies, other than as a way of diverting. 1. Humans introduce animals as pets. 2. The animal population explodes. 3. Humans blame the animals. In other words, it's using the rate of reproduction as justification for further abuse. Animals aren't being abused in the wild. But inviting them in, making them dependent on us, then subjecting them to painful surgeries and hormone disorders when they become a nuissance -- that's abuse.

"Hey, look! There's an animal that nobody's protecting. Let's chop off its gonads and lock it in a cage!"