I was thinking bitter misanthropic shut-ins, but lazy works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interne...haracteristics

"Two studies published in 2013 and 2014 have found that people who are identified as trolls tend to have dark personality traits and show signs of sadism, antisocial behavior, psychopathy, and machiavellianism.[36][37] The 2013 study suggested that there are a number of similarities between anti-social and flame trolling activities[36] and the 2014 study suggested that the noxious personality characteristics known as the "dark triad of personality" should be investigated in the analysis of trolling, and concluded that trolling appears "to be an Internet manifestation of everyday sadism."[37] Their relevance is suggested by research linking these traits to bullying in both adolescents and adults. The 2014 study found that trolls operate as agents of chaos on the Internet, exploiting hot-button issues to make users appear overly emotional or foolish in some manner. If an unfortunate person falls into their trap, trolling intensifies for further, merciless amusement. This is why novice Internet users are routinely admonished, "Do not feed the trolls!" The 2013 study found that trolls often have a high expectation of what it means to be successful, which is higher than they are able to attain, and this results in them resenting others who think they are successful but who fall below their standards."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad

No. I claimed that IQ tests are pretty much crap for identifying really smart people.

No attempts to hide it. This is simply preferable to doing anything that bears even the slightest resemblance to productive use of my time or genuine social interaction.

A 2015 study found that those who write racist stuff on the internet show signs of racism.

This morning I had a boiled egg for breakfast

SMP TO THE RESCUE!!!!!!

NO MAN LEFT BEHIND

Wow, sort of mean for Masque to turn on chez like that.

LOL, even when masque is plagiarizing and insulting someone the post is an unreadable, mysteriously footnoted, word-bomb.

Just call everyone a estrogen-laden teet-sucker and move on with your life.

Racism: A Symptom of the Narcissistic Personality
Carl C. Bell

Despite the criticism that psychoanalytic models are not applicable to social phenomena, knowledge of the dynamics of narcissistic development aids in understanding a particular kind of racist individual. Specifically, racist attitudes may be indicative of a narcissistic personality disorder or of a regression to primitive narcissistic functioning secondary to environmental forces. The differentiation between the narcissistic racist, the stress-induced racist, and the socially misinformed racist is discussed utilizing clinical paradigms discovered in psychotherapy. Life experiences and religion are discussed as possible aids in the transformation of primary narcissism into secondary narcissism.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...00039-0029.pdf

I do not post here (PU) often. When i do its in detail because i care. I do not come here to fight and win battles and keep some score. I come in 2+2 to learn something and have a good time. It is to my advantage to interact with beautiful brains and ethical individuals.

If there ever was such study it would concern itself a lot more with the prejudiced, bigoted and outright malicious behavior of those online individuals towards real actual members of their community, their inability to move on and offer a hand of friendship, their persistence in holding grudges and their relentless pursuit of intolerance towards other diverging, unpopular and maybe not politically correct opinions (some even shared at surface with real racists) which however ought to be debated and challenged properly not by shunning, caricaturing and trivializing the contributions of members of the community that have invested thousands of hours not to gossip but to educate and interact creatively (solve problems, offer mini lectures sharing knowledge, calculate projects etc) in a learning experience with other people.

The real fiasco of 2+2 is not what happened to BruceZ (fiasco in itself of course about how it was handled and not taken to a direction of rational compromise and friendship by all members). The real fiasco in my opinion is the one that was born afterwards, when it has finally become clear several months later that a significant fraction of the community is unable to offer a hand of friendship and move on for the greater good, a capacity which is the very foundation of the fight against intolerance, racism and all forms of prejudice and injustices towards groups of people.

Ask yourself what was more racist here? Opinions offered in posts to limited group of people that often debate to the extreme (historically verifiable by many threads) in their effort to understand better and inspire others (even through opposition) why they support certain standard well respected ideals, posts that often were exaggerated for effect or were contrarian and some other times they just were not politically correct opinions or proved even unfortunate and unwise, unkind, insensitive (but never truly malicious at heart towards any specific individual trying to harm or undermine prospects of anyone which is what true racism is ) or the well documented acts of hostility, shunning and outright trolling towards groups of people (eg SMP members) that were trivialized, marginalized and essentially treated in a uniform (all alike as if we are not individuals that may even disagree with each other) prejudiced manner, identical to how true racists and bullies treat their victims.

In my opinion there is only one way to get out of this fiasco of past 6 months showing indeed that we are no hypocrites trying to constantly find new ways to hate each other and remain divided and in the name of attacking racism and defending civilized society principles prove more racist than anything remotely experienced already in past posts. To defeat racism you need to not endorse its methods and procedures of prejudice, trivialization and character assassination of others (any group of others). You need to avoid being lazy, uneducated and callous. You need to show you care for the community and other people. You need to show empathy. You need to further education and the improvement of society at large any way possible. With your light you defeat the darkness. Thats how you defeat racism. With your own example first. By offering your hand to the other people as friend and contributing in any way you can to their improvement as individuals and the quality of their experience interacting with you and each other. They will be forced to reciprocate then and it will be even easier to accept their responsibilities and modify behavior even. You need to be the change you want to see in the world. It is that simple.

The management of 2+2 for example Mat Sklansky, David Sklansky, Mason Malmuth and the group of mods need to find the common sense and courage and sense of justice and do as soon as possible what they were unable to do 6 months ago to contain the situation and fix things for all involved and which would have lead to no significant confrontations from the very first week and would have demanded all sides to be calm and careful in their treatment of others and in particular members of the community that have invested many years and thousands of well thought posts that took time to compose with pure intention to help the community improve. You do not throw under the bus such people when you disagree with them or find their reactions emotionally ugly. You investigate the reasons for the outbursts even. You prove fair to all sides. You debate them, you invite them to see they are wrong and change even. You do not try to trap them to emotional outbursts and then strike them or judge them at the worse days or moments of their online life, conveniently trivializing or ignoring all the other thousands of days of remarkable positive contributions. You show you care for the people that have shown to your community they cared for it for over 10-15 years. There arent many such people around. You do not marginalize and insult them or allow others to do it with impunity without rejecting the ugliness. This is what didnt happen. The leadership didnt do what leaders must be able to always do to improve a community they lead when in crisis. There was no proper direction and vigorous demand for respect requested.

A leader is capable to decide what is best for a community in tough times. The best is for the members to be able to express in a healthy manner their disagreements, to respect the humanity of the other unknown people and to not trivialize their contributions but care instead to evaluate a person by the totality of their achievements and interactions. This is what someone that doesnt have malice, racism and lack of self confidence in their hearts decides to do. So lets do it. You know what each has to do. Give us back what we had only better and stronger. Stop hating and start offering friendship. Accept your role in the escalation of the crisis through intolerance and reckless behavior and finally understand how much you can hurt a person with what you say and do to the point that they do not care to participate anymore. A community doesnt do its best to throw away and remove functions (or if it does, it does so for a proper/fair period of time and then its restored) from members that have historically served their roles and functions in outstanding manner. If you disagree with some of their posts you debate them and remain respectful of their humanity and character and contributions. You do not deprive other individuals from the pleasure to interact with creative members of the community. You insist instead in strengthening and proliferating such relationships. This is what true leadership is all about and how it improves the site. You care for the people that cared for you in the past.

If you actually want interaction I suggest you post in a manner that encourages it.

Quoting is not plagiarizing. What on earth? See what i mean? What purpose does this post metaname2 have but to inspire more friction and insults and emotions?

All i did is provided a link for what kind of people troll others and why according to some studies. It is pathetic and malicious conduct anywhere seen unless its done properly creatively and in a way that eventually reveals itself as sarcastic on purpose to achieve a certain point and prove also self critical in the process, removing any doubt about its intentions. Otherwise its just another attempt to be nasty and callous.

Yes you should listen to yourself on this too. Your endlessly hostile style can change a great deal to get there.

See this I can engage with. I don't think my style is hostile more abrupt and abrupt with those that have given me cause.

Reading Bruce's posts and calling them racist is not trolling by any reasonable definition of trolling. You may not like that, but then you are being intolerant and holding a grudge of a diverging opinion.

The person who shunned, caricatured, and trivialized the opinions of others was Bruce. The person who refused to offer friendship and understanding was Bruce. His response was lazy, callous, lacking empathy, and extended no olive branch.

You're getting better, but I was still able to tighten it up a little.


Sorry about the plagiarizing bit, something of a morning brain-fart.

Bruce's posts and opinons were the more racist part. Hope that clears up any confusion.

Leadership also bent over backward to acknowledge Bruce's contributions to the community and not insult his viewpoints (other than DS, who engaged in exactly the manner Masque requests), but lets not let reality get in the way of an elite word salad.

You really don't think any of his posts in the mod forum showed any understanding or empathy? Some olive twigs?

It takes both sides to extend hands and sometimes in stages but was there any effort from you or others on your side? maybe there was and I just haven't heard about it?

Are you even suggesting that you wanted such a thing?

Yeah. Does masque think we forgot what happened? Bruce was never punished in the slightest for his litany of racist posts. He was punished for being an ******* who couldn't help but lash out at people.

I propose yet another forum, Hands Across Two Plus Two, where posters (and mods) can go after a falling out to offer friendship and understanding and where there is no shunning the opinions of others. I propose Spank for mod of this.

MrWookie,

Any ethical responsibility on any of you guys for taking someone (or enabling/tolerating as moderators others to take) to a position to express himself so emotionally ugly? Could it be that the accumulated ugliness, lack of empathy, multiple insults, lies, distortions and yellow journalism, the lack of respect and pure trivialization of a history of posts that is 100s of times more compact (in effort and time taken to compose) than many other posts that simply gossip and offer no proof of anything and the lack of proper guidance and control from the leadership to contain the situation and force the masses of people to more civilized conduct, all these things are the true parents of the explosive lashing out?

When you force someone to behave nasty in a brief moment dont you own any of the responsibility that took that person there? This is the moment the others must realize their part in it and the individual needs to learn to contain himself better and to behave in a way that is worthy of their overall history of positive contributions. All sides need to learn here and accept their responsibility.

And if that happens anyway and we get to the ugliness how do you defuse it and learn from it?

Do you think that in his functions as moderator of poker theory or probability BruceZ ever undermined 2+2? Didnt he in fact often enrich those forums with his own posts? Isnt that what you can hope to have from a moderator, someone to sustain, stimulate and guide a discussion, attract new members and keep everyone behaving properly?

BruceZ didnt behave nasty as moderator in those functions over the years, only later and very briefly (days) in the generalized battle that took place. Yes its unworthy of a moderator to behave that way but its also more unworthy for many other moderators to behave in ways that created the outburst. The fact remains you punish that behavior properly (which happened already) and then you restore it in order to reclaim the value lost in the original forums. I have no doubt that a big enough community can find members to improve their roles and cover the loss in some manner (a manner inspired often by the original example) but a community with the original member involved together with those others individuals that rose up will still be better and stronger than the original one or the one without it that remains divided and unable to move on.


Did any of you that are so eager to joke about math actually take the time to study individual threads and recognize how much time a random quality post in such threads takes to produce and how much effort might be behind it? If i invest over a decade of 2-3-4 hours per day equal quality of commitment to that of a real job and then the management doesnt put a stop to the insults of all kinds of people that havent earned such level of audacity and critical ugliness with their own posting history then yes i can imagine getting real angry and doing nasty things that i shouldnt. And great people can always recover from this state and avoid it in the future.

Are we those great people?

A poster wrote that African slaves hit the lottery, never apologized for the content, never received any punishment for content, and then took it up a notch by calling critics estrogen-laden butt buddies, sending aggressive PMs, threatening out of subforum bannings in an abuse of mod power, and sparking up some potential DDOS attacks.

Please show how this consisted of "extending hands".

Please illustrate a set of actions, or a single post, by the "other side" that would have shown "empathy" and "understanding" as well as evidence/reasoning as to why this would have resulted in more appropriate behavior from Bruce.

Given this situation how, roughly speaking, would you apportion the "blame" for this "fiasco"?

Deuce's spank reference was funny, actually, because Bruce isn't that complicated, he is the classic schoolyard bully.

Some most likely never wanted to extend or receive olive branches. They missed an opportunity to do a service to 2+2 imo (apart from anything else)
but there were times when a reasonable attempt was possible, Bruce was making an effort to do so (in at times his own inimitable way)