Continued: (Ed) Atheism Plus/Free Thought Blogs (FTB)

Belz... said:
I think Prestige was being sarcastic.
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I thought we were switching sides on the question of making unproven accusations of wrongdoing, like how folks do halfway through a soccer football American football match. It seemed like good clean fun to me. Did I misunderstand the nature of the conversation?
 
theprestige said:
I thought we were switching sides on the question of making unproven accusations of wrongdoing...
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Just so long as we ignore the part where Carrier was not an eyewitness to the events alleged, your clever analogy totally works.
 
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d4m10n said:
Just so long as we ignore the part where Carrier was not an eyewitness to the events alleged, your clever analogy totally works.
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That's a fair point. I apologize if my earlier playfulness annoyed you.

Okay, seriously now: Let me make sure I understand your position:

It's okay for someone to make unfounded allegations of wrongdoing, as long as they claim to have been an eyewitness to, or victim of, the wrongdoing in question.

The only thing that makes Carrier's insinuations and baseless rumors "revolting and defamatory behavior" in your view, is that he neglected to put "... and I was there and saw it for myself" at the end.

Is that correct?
 
If instead of passing on vague rumours and insinuations, Carrier had claimed to be a youthful victim of child molestation a few decades ago, then I would take his claim far more seriously. It would still be defamatory if untrue, of course.
 
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theprestige said:
The only thing that makes Carrier's insinuations and baseless rumors "revolting and defamatory behavior" in your view, is that he neglected to put "... and I was there and saw it for myself" at the end.

Is that correct?
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Carrier may have spoken to the "victim" (I use quotes for good reason). Is that not good enough?
 
Considering that he hasn't mentioned any sources at all, that scenario doesn’t seem likely to trouble us IRL
 
PZ's blindness to his own hypocrisy is amazing (and the same goes for some of the pharyngula commenters). He's made a name for himself by treating people with a complete lack of charity, extreme judgments and doing things like "treating things read between the lines as if they were established fact". His loyal commenter-base has long followed suit in treating people this way as well. And yet whenever they apply the usual treatment to one of PZ's friends, he suddenly finds it upsetting and beneath him. But I've never seen him self reflect and consider that he may be part of the problem.

I think I'm basically just echoing what Nugent said.
 
Many people have said, for many years, that PZ’s dedication to anti-charity and groupthinking would eventually destroy his reputation as an author worth reading.

So let it be written, so let it be done.
 
It's especially sad when you think back a few years to when PZ and Phil Plait were neck-and-neck for the title of #1 science blog on the net. Phil now writes for Slate, and PZ is pretty much just a footnote to history.
 
wareyin said:
It's all everybody else's fault that there is no community here. First he complains about people he has labeled into groups, then he complains about the artificial cliques. How self unaware Myers is.
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The community "knows" who's fault it is. It wasn't them.

You may or may not have heard that PZ Myers ( an ally of Atheism and Athesim Plus) has had to close down his world famous Thunderdome, Mended Drum and Lounge threads on Pharyngula due to numerous incursions by misogynists and racists ('Pitters' in other words) who were harassing himself and Ophelia Benson with vile, unsubstantiated slurs.
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http://atheismplus.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6930

Sweet Jebus, I hope they migrate over there because the resulting **** storm will be side splitting hilarious.
 
Stacko said:
The community "knows" who's fault it is. It wasn't them.



http://atheismplus.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6930

Sweet Jebus, I hope they migrate over there because the resulting **** storm will be side splitting hilarious.
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But, but, but there is no community to know! Of course, if you aren't lock-step with them, you're a "Pitter". But Peezus was complaining that it was regulars attacking Benson. Does that mean regulars were Pitters, too?
 
Stacko said:
The community "knows" who's fault it is. It wasn't them.



http://atheismplus.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6930

Sweet Jebus, I hope they migrate over there because the resulting **** storm will be side splitting hilarious.
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I think that depends on whose side the A+ people are. It was my assumption that the A+ people would be lining up against Ophelia Benson, and if so, the OP and others that follow will be swiftly banned.

On the other hand, if A+ is generally on the same side as the OP, there will be a phoney war period and then blood will flow because the "robust discourse" that goes went on in Thunderdome is bound to offend some of the delicate flowers still in A+.

The best case scenario(from the point of view of those of us with popcorn and beer to consume) is that A+ is split on the subject and a further schism occurs.

By the way, it's worth reading the last few posts on Butterflies and Wheels. Ophelia is documenting the hate against her and it's quite illuminating, especially the comments. As far as I can tell, Ophelia is guilty of nothing more than answering the question "are trans women actually women" with "I don't know, the issues are complicated". People have leapt on that and twisted it into "Ophelia hates trans women". I even read a post by one person who claimed that, having found out that OB is a trans hater, you can go back through her writings retrospectively and find evidence for the same. This seems exactly like the Christians who are insistent that the Old Testament is shot through with references to Jesus.

What we are seeing here is exactly like religion. The Horde seems to have the same dynamic as a fanatical religious sect. The only thing that stops them from tearing each other apart is the charisma of their leader. Unfortunately, their leader is not Jesus, it's PZ Myers.
 
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