Quote:
Originally Posted by simplicitus
My comment on Popper was pretty elliptical. To be more explicit, if a theory explains everything, including counter-examples, you can be pretty sure it's flawed, or even outright BS. If you just need another epicycle in the ptolemaic system, or a little shift in the role of intellectuals in association with the means of production, or this or that latent/unconscious cause to explain unexpected phenomena, then you're trending toward self-reinforcing bs.
I laid out the hypothesis to falsify: The falsification of my theory here would be if the chez and Clovis types of the forum really and consistently object to "bullying" and "unjustified personal insults."
The answer with chez is crystal clear that he is bothered only by offenses that go one way. I ain't gonna re-litigate it because talking about chez is as boring as talking about Fly but he was BruceZ's defender. Ain't no ****ing plausible defense of chez here.
Maybe Clovis is a different story. I don't follow him that closely.
Obviously you have to filter in your own personal experience. If the tone and tenor of Fly's personal insults are really worse than you see anywhere else. If the responses you see to Fly are really different from what you witness here on 2p2 and elsewhere.
I'm not going to retroactively go back and catalogue every insult on the forum but if you'd like, I could be the guy going forward that obnoxiously quotes personal insults, bullying behavior, brazenly offensive posts and pages Fly's enemies to the thread and wonder aloud where their consistently applied outrage is. It sounds kind of miserable for everyone and at some point I think the act would become pretty tired and considered a distraction. I suspect you and I would agree there's no need to do such things, and actually the entire premise of the forum is a bit of high-brow trolling where people try to talk down to and insult each other. Right?
If so, what are the characteristics of the people who are fraught with distress over Fly but more or less happily participate in all of the other insult-trading? As I said, I think they are all probably white and very much like chez, highly defensive of BruceZ's ability to lambast Mexican immigrants and compare them to insects but then tut tuts and wags their tone-policing finger at Fly. I know not what to make of that other than white privilege. But as I said, perhaps the impulse comes from elsewhere. I don't really debate the fact that the people consistently waging war on Fly are thin-skinned babies, regardless of their motivations: that they obviously and transparently are.