OT: A Modest and (possibly Un-) Reasonable Proposal

[Nanohedron]

@Rando7

@Cranberry

But what about all of us who don’t think talking about politics and religion is harmful? I don’t necessarily think a post going off into political or religious debate is a bad thing. If I thought talking religion and politics was somehow harmful, I’d stop it. And I’m sure all the other folks who also participate in the threads would, too.

This is very difficult for me to say (must…keep…head…from…imploding…) - I agree with Cranberry.

applies anti-implosion suction cups to Rando7’s head

True. I think, however, that the general point that Herbivore12 (sorry about the uppercase “H”, **H**erbi; I just can’t help myself) was making was that big whopping digressions are not so much harmful as they are confusing in the end for pinheads such as myself. If a big discussion of sexuality or log cabin Republicanism ensues out of what was originally a topic about porpoises, for instance, I have do do a lot more sifting than I might prefer. Now, admittedly, I am most entertained by such digressions (sometimes). It’s just like conversation in the 3D. It’s normal; one thing leads to another. But for the purposes of thread cohesion AND courtesy to the original poster (now there’s a concept), I see no harm in minimizing (not eliminating, mind you) digressions unless the author plays along. That changes things.

[Steven]

@herbivore12

You’re reading one of the excellent threads here on C&F, revelling in the discussion, composing your own thoughts to submit your astounding knock-'em-on-the-head argument, when suddenly the thread veers wildly off-topic, into realms not even remotely related to the initial subject of discussion.

Yeah, I hate when that happens! Y’know what else I hate? People who don’t use their turn signals!

Wait, I mean, people who don’t use their turn signals because they’re so busy changing the subject. (Whew!)

Back to actual discussion. I have to agree with Wombat (and damn you for saying it before me so I can’t sound all clever!) that it’s just not as easy as you make it out to be. When someone’s answering a topic, they may write about a wide range of things in the same post, all of them connected. Then someone replies to some parts of that post, and maybe inserts some other things, all connected. At some point, we all realize we’re off topic, but nobody really said to themselves “gee, I think I’ll change the topic here and hijack the thread.” Sure, that might happen some of the time, but most of the time I think it’s just the natural digression that happens during a conversation.

The same thing happens in spoken, face-to-face conversations. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a great response to something that was being discussed, but by the time I’m able to get a word in edgewise, we’re talking about something completely different. However, nobody thought they should go start a separate conversation about the new topic. It’s just how things happen.

Oh well!

Steven

[The_Weekenders]

Ha, steven! I sometimes consider myself “the Parenthetical One” for these tendencies. I think, write and talk in LONG sentences with way too many parenthetical diversions. Avoided 'em here, though!!!

[Nanohedron]

@The Weekenders

Ha, steven! I sometimes consider myself “the Parenthetical One” for these tendencies. I think, write and talk in LONG sentences with way too many parenthetical diversions. Avoided 'em here, though!!!

I sure didn’t. :roll:

[jim_stone]

The thread had gone on on subject, more or less,
for a long time. When we began changing subject
I thought it was because the original subject
had been exhausted, not that the thread
had been hijacked. When it turned out that
people were out there who still hadn’t
expressed their views on the original
subject and wanted to, we went back
to the original subject. I’m not seeing
a real problem here. Best

[Nanohedron]

Jim, do you have to always be so durned reasonable? I like it better when you want to talk about naughty things.

[jim_stone]

Sex! Drugs! Rock n’ Roll!
You’re right. I feel much better now.

[Nanohedron]

There ya go.

[Jack]

I agree with jim, more and more.

[mjacob]

I agree w/ jim as well.

These digressions can be fun, but they’re not good for the quality of the board. If people want to show off their intellect (or lack thereof) in political or religious matters, there are myriads of other websites to do just that.

By digression we mean an OT thread?
I disagree. The OT threads are usually all that interest me, b/c you can only talk about whistles for so long, and there are alot of smart people on this board to bounce ideas off of.
I don’t think the value of that can be overstated.

[jim_stone]

Thanks! The trick, Old Berry, is to keep the
critical thing (which you use very effectively to see through
bad arguments) turned on ALWAYS, including
when the argument is for a position you believe
in. There are bad arguments for good positions,
and you can spot them too. That’s when things
start to get really interesting. Best

[Jack]

Quote @ jim stone

Thanks! The trick, Old Berry, is to keep the
critical thing (which you use very effectively to see through
bad arguments) turned on ALWAYS, including
when the argument is for a position you believe
in. There are bad arguments for good positions,
and you can spot them too. That’s when things
start to get really interesting. Best

You know, you’re absolutely right. For example, on the abortion issue, even though I personally believe a fetus is part of a womans body, your argument that she can’t have a penis and be sucking his thumb at the same time is simply true. So I haven’t been able to refute it. I actually like that argument very much and admire it, though for some reason it hasn’t changed how I feel. I still feel that a late term fetus is part of a woman’s body, but I can’t put forth a rational argument to justify that, which leaves me in a weird conundrum, in which, if I stay for long without a reasonable answer to myself, my mind may likely change. Kudos, to jim stone!

This personal experience also leads me to believe that the generally accepted “fact” that arguing on the internet isn’t productive is totally false. I see my mind changing in many ways.

[johnz]

I just ordered the complete Betty Boop collection on VHS, and the first nine discs of the Twilight Zone show. I can’t wait, many hours of joy coming.
Take care, Johnz

[jim_stone]

The pro-choice position may be correct,
but the popular arguments for it are often
poor and sometimes scary.

The best arguments
for it are given by philosophers, and the ones
that are hardest to refute conclude that
born infants don’t have a moral right to life,
so they certainly didn’t have one before
they were born. You get the right to life when you
become self-aware, which is maybe a year
and a half. Well that would certainly solve
the problem, but I can’t bring myself to
believe that born infants don’t have
a claim to my care and protection.
I spend long times looking at them…

The next best pro-choice argument
is that even if the fetus has a right to
life, the woman’s rights entitle her
to abort him anyway. Suppose you wake
up and find yourself tubed into a violinist
from the symphony orchestra; he has a
kidney disease and the music lovers’s
association has discovered that you alone have
the right blood type to help. So they’ve
kidnapped him and you and last night
tubed him into you so that your kidneys
can be used to purify his blood while
his kidneys recovered. But don’t worry,
it’s only for nine months!

Plainly you have a right to disconnect
yourself–even though this means his death.
His right to life doesn’t entitle him to the
continued use of your body without your
consent–you’re not responsible for his
predicament, after all.

The obvious problem is that the typical unwanted
pregnancy is the result of a voluntary act which
had pregnancy as a foreseeable consequence,
and we are generally accountable for the
foreseeable consequences of our voluntary acts.
Arguably the fetus, if he has a right to life , derives
a right to the use of the woman’s body from
her voluntary act of creating him in it.

The most the violinist analogy would be able
to justify, therefore, is abortion when the
pregnancy is due to rape or perhaps when
it’s involuntary becasuse the woman
couldn’t foresee the consequence–e.g.
she’s too young or is retarded or insane…

It is extremely unlikely that we are going
to find a plausible difference between infants
before and after they are born that will
deprive the fetus of the right to life she will
enjoy after
she is born, supposing, as I do, that
born infants have a right to life.
What’s the difference between the
infant before and after she is born
that deprives her of the right to life
she will enjoy after she is born?
These break down under scrutiny,
pretty much the way kinky hair
and brown skin do, as depriving
the fetus of a right to life.
So most pro-choice philosophers maintain that
newborns have no right to life, and I can’t
go that far. Best

[Jack]

Quote @ johnz

many hours of joy coming

Just had to quote that before Nanohedron did.

[herbivore12]

@jim stone

The thread had gone on on subject, more or less,
for a long time. When we began changing subject
I thought it was because the original subject
had been exhausted, not that the thread
had been hijacked. When it turned out that
people were out there who still hadn’t
expressed their views on the original
subject and wanted to, we went back
to the original subject. I’m not seeing
a real problem here. Best

I wasn’t writing in response, as a number of people here seem to think, to the porpoise thread, though the wild veering into “Homosexuality: Good, Bad, Natural, Not?” was a bit bothersome and absolutely unrelated. I wrote because this happens rather a lot, and – especially in threads that begin about music – has turned off several very fine musicians who would have been great resources to have in the communiity but who haven’t the time or inclination to sift through the large amount of dross that accumulates in many threads. Also, the fact that clicking on a thread titled, “Great Lunasa concert last night” or something might bring one straight to a heated argument about whether Clinton was loathsome (for the record, I , a liberal, think in many ways that he was, absolutely) or if late-term abortion is morally defensible, and such.

It seems in those cases that the simple courtesy of allowing an author’s thread to flourish (this is a more strictly enforced ettiquette on a number of forums, by the way, and considered good general internet practice) is the right thing and the polite thing and the wise thing, since discussion about abortion or politicians often brings the posters running, and those comments may deserve their own thread.

However, I see that this thread itself has become one about abortion, and that this is a losing battle; probably even an ill-considered suggestion, in the long run, so I’ll withdraw. Sorry for harping (though I mostly play flute, these days).

[Wombat]

@herbivore12

It seems in those cases that the simple courtesy of allowing an author’s thread to flourish (this is a more strictly enforced ettiquette on a number of forums, by the way, and considered good general internet practice) is the right thing and the polite thing and the wise thing, since discussion about abortion or politicians often brings the posters running, and those comments may deserve their own thread.

However, I see that this thread itself has become one about abortion, and that this is a losing battle; probably even an ill-considered suggestion, in the long run, so I’ll withdraw. Sorry for harping (though I mostly play flute, these days).

No, it’s not ill-considered although you probably are fighting a losing battle. It is possible to insist on standards of relevance that are high. They are in force on the ITM board and absolutely everyone enforces them. That’s what it takes and that’s why it won’t happen here.

I think there are two reasons why it won’t happen here. First there is the problem of the bully with the ‘personality’: the person who won’t play by the rules and who sees every thread as potentially about them (or about their current hobby horse.) Amazingly (to me) these people have their fan clubs and sympathisers who defend their rudeness in the name of free speech and attack those who take them to task for being self-appointed thought police (who, presumably, don’t have a right to free speech.)

Less amazing, we pride ourselves on being an inclusive community. To have a say or a visible presence, you don’t have to be musically experienced, talented, bright, educated, stable …actually you don’t have to be any of the above. I quite like this and I think this problem is the price we pay for this inclusiveness. So one problem is the short attention span or just the problem of poor attention in general. Just to illustrate, several posts on this thread defend OT threads. But they were never under attack; what was under attack is the changing direction of threads. I guess those folks just weren’t attending very carefully. It certainly wasn’t malice. So long as they aren’t attacking me or anyone else, I don’t really want to take them to task for it though. I’m almost sorry to have used them as an example but I just wanted a vivid illustration of the difficulty and I’m not accusing any of them of anything but not attending very carefully.

[Jack]

I disagree, Wombat.

The primary reason this board is different from the IrTrad board in the amount of OT discussion, and the amount of time threads veer off into another unrelated topic (not being unattentive here), is that this board has way more people. It moves much faster than the IrTrad board, so things here wander off into other topics much more often and more easily than they do over there (or the flute forum, or the pipe forum, etc.).

Quote @ Wombat

To have a say or a visible presence, > you don’t have to be musically experienced, talented, bright, educated, stable > …actually you don’t have to be any of the above.

Are you accusing people who post here of being inexperienced, dull, uneducated, and unstable?

[Wombat]

@Cranberry

I disagree, Wombat.

The primary reason this board is different from the IrTrad board in the amount of OT discussion, and the amount of time threads veer off into another unrelated topic, is that this board has way more people who post frequently, and moves much faster than the IrTrad board, so things here wander off into other topics much more easily than they do over there.

Try wandering off over there and see what response you get.

@Cranberry

Quote @ Wombat

To have a say or a visible presence, > you don’t have to be musically experienced, talented, bright, educated, stable > …actually you don’t have to be any of the above.

Who are you calling inexperienced, dull, uneducated, and unstable?

I suggest if you believe any of us are those things you tell us to our face(s) and not beat around the bush, as it were.

Sorry, that didn’t come out quite the way I intended it. Read the rest of what I say and you’ll see that I’m sympathetic, not exclusionist. Also, if you follow my posts closely, you’ll see that I’m only patronising to people who criticise me (or others) sharply without knowing what they’re talking about. If someone rolled their eyebrows at you over something you’ve researched in depth and published on, how would you react?

I meant exceptionally musically experienced, bright … etc. I was only saying this board is not exclusively for an elete. These days, probably always, ordinary folk don’t get an education that is conducive to paying attention closely. That isn’t a personal failing and I wouldn’t accuse you or anybody else of it since it isn’t the sort of thing that warrants accusation. But it is the sort of thing that would put Herb’s highly focussed friends off. So, understood in the way I meant it, as a general difficulty to maintain rigorously focussed concentation, do you really disagree with me? The general inability to maintain focus on this board is a running joke. Hadn’t you noticed?

[Jack]

I realised that was what you meant after I re-read your post a few times, so I changed the wording of my response to reflect that.

It seemed as though you were calling a bunch of different people a bunch of names. Actually, that wouldn’t be surprising over here .