On Board Decorum

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an0maly said:
And now for something mostly useless, a digression on cussing.

Cussing and cursing is a fascinating topic, bound up with the threat we feel when our ideas are challenged, i.e., why we might punch a wall over somebody who is wrong on the internet. This is related to social convention and also to brains, evolution and brain disorders. On the lobbing cusses and curses, it's the attempt to give an emotion you have to someone else (not the xmas season sort of giving, exactly, because it's usually to make someone feel a negative emotion), and at times a shortcut or crutch if you feel you can't do it in more articulate ways. I always think it would be fun to freak people, and use nasty words from a few centuries ago:

Axwaddle (n. filthy or lazy person)
Chawbacon (n. an uncultured fool)
Dunderhead (n. thickheaded fool)
Lickwimble (n. nonspecific personal insult)
Nimgimmer (n. venereal surgeon; motherf*er)
Pecksniffian (a. sanctimoniously hypocritical)
Spado (n. eunuch)
Toerag (n. worthless person from the worst part of society)
Tosspot (n. bumbling fool; drunk)
Waghalter (n. person suitable to be hanged)

But if you used them, even if you did so feeling all the feels, the other person would not because the social convention is not agreed to. Doing so would just deflate cussing into fun, and what fun is that?

That is so because they are also not lodged deep in the brain, via culture. So they fail, even if the other person knew the meanings. In Gilles de la Tourette syndrome cussing suddenly emerges at random from people for no reason, something akin to a verbal epileptic fit, but firing the neurons in the brain that produce cussing. In dementia failing brains can also suddenly and randomly produce cuss words. The pathway in both these failings does not need the complex frontal cortex to work. This is all a reactionary emotion of anger deep in the brain, upwelling in out of control ways at times, and located in the primitive amygdala. It's something we share in evolutionary history going all the way back to reptiles. It has survival value because it arises fast and easily. Mess with a mother alligator's eggs and you will see some ancient emotion in action.

We have a feeling like somebody is messing with our eggs when our cherished beliefs are threatened, and we can have something like a Tourette syndrome attack, but provoked rather than a random brain mistake. Once you understand some of this stuff, that the origin of cussing is meaningless social agreement, and survival value misplaced, your own reaction cussing might be reduced. Possibly at a loss of some fun though.

/useless digression
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A Scott introduced me to the word "numpty" which is someone who is an idiot.

I'm not saying anyone here is a numpty, but there are times when the word comes to mind 😏
 
an0maly said:
And now for something mostly useless, a digression on cussing.

Cussing and cursing is a fascinating topic, bound up with the threat we feel when our ideas are challenged, i.e., why we might punch a wall over somebody who is wrong on the internet. This is related to social convention and also to brains, evolution and brain disorders. On the lobbing cusses and curses, it's the attempt to give an emotion you have to someone else (not the xmas season sort of giving, exactly, because it's usually to make someone feel a negative emotion), and at times a shortcut or crutch if you feel you can't do it in more articulate ways. I always think it would be fun to freak people, and use nasty words from a few centuries ago:

Axwaddle (n. filthy or lazy person)
Chawbacon (n. an uncultured fool)
Dunderhead (n. thickheaded fool)
Lickwimble (n. nonspecific personal insult)
Nimgimmer (n. venereal surgeon; motherf*er)
Pecksniffian (a. sanctimoniously hypocritical)
Spado (n. eunuch)
Toerag (n. worthless person from the worst part of society)
Tosspot (n. bumbling fool; drunk)
Waghalter (n. person suitable to be hanged)

But if you used them, even if you did so feeling all the feels, the other person would not because the social convention is not agreed to. Doing so would just deflate cussing into fun, and what fun is that?

That is so because they are also not lodged deep in the brain, via culture. So they fail, even if the other person knew the meanings. In Gilles de la Tourette syndrome cussing suddenly emerges at random from people for no reason, something akin to a verbal epileptic fit, but firing the neurons in the brain that produce cussing. In dementia failing brains can also suddenly and randomly produce cuss words. The pathway in both these failings does not need the complex frontal cortex to work. This is all a reactionary emotion of anger deep in the brain, upwelling in out of control ways at times, and located in the primitive amygdala. It's something we share in evolutionary history going all the way back to reptiles. It has survival value because it arises fast and easily. Mess with a mother alligator's eggs and you will see some ancient emotion in action.

We have a feeling like somebody is messing with our eggs when our cherished beliefs are threatened, and we can have something like a Tourette syndrome attack, but provoked rather than a random brain mistake. Once you understand some of this stuff, that the origin of cussing is meaningless social agreement, and survival value misplaced, your own reaction cussing might be reduced. Possibly at a loss of some fun though.

/useless digression
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I think chawbacon is my new favorite word. Toerag and tosspot I know I've heard used recently in modern terms from Brits.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
Super tends to be polite when you agree with him. He can be pretty awful when he disagrees with you. And sure, he does the over explaining bit but I'm a little shocked that you didn't see the nastiness. He could be a pretty big bully himself. I think it was reaffirming for him when a lot of people agreed with him. I think the difference is the new board hasn't banned or run off all the people that would push back on him and he's having to adjust.
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I've disagreed with him plenty, and he's never been anything but polite, if a bit overly erudite, in his responses to me. I tend to avoid the pure political threads, though. The only time I see him being a bit of a bully is when somebody is stuck on seeing their opinion as fact, and keeps insisting on the error. For whatever reason, that tends to get super's motor revving.
 
NYCBlueBlood said:
I've disagreed with him plenty, and he's never been anything but polite, if a bit overly erudite, in his responses to me. I tend to avoid the pure political threads, though. The only time I see him being a bit of a bully is when somebody is stuck on seeing their opinion as fact, and keeps insisting on the error. For whatever reason, that tends to get super's motor revving.
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I think he had a difficult time distinguishing his own opinion from a fact and could get pretty nasty when someone else had a different opinion and he thought they were debating against something factual. He's not alone in having a different opinion of course. I certainly have plenty of them and most others do as well. I think the difference is many people don't take offense when people have different opinions, and although rarer, some people might even make an allowance that their opinion that they truly believe, might be wrong.

Some people even welcome a different opinion to be able to learn something new or get a different perspective. Certainly not saying this is him, but I think many folks on the spectrum struggle with that sort of empathy. Not their fault but that doesn't mean its pleasant to be around.

And that's enough pop psychology from me because firstly it's probably wrong and secondly because I don't think it's right to be talking about the guy while he's not around. I'm out.
 
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this has become an interesting thread. first i should thank the people sticking up for me. i have gotten considerably better at one handed typing, especially since I can use my left pinky now that the swelling there is gone. but i am not ready to come back full time yet. not really close. i am also trying out my third mood stabilizing med as the others lost efficacy.

1. i would like to propose a distinction between substantive and procedural decorum or decorum in form. i know, nothing could be more law professor, but hear me out. lets consider two hypothetical conversations. first, one where a person says i oppose affirmative action because i believe in equality of opportunity; then the response is fuck off. that fuck you is the decorum we are mostly discussing here and yes its inappropriate in that situation. but what if someone says, i oppose affirmative action because black people are inferior. isn't fuck you an appropriate response? because the original statement, stated neutrally as a political opinion, is actually an attack on other people.

2. which brings me to batt boy's perseveration about one insult from months ago (note that 'slurping' is a common term and thats what i was drawing on). he has omitted the context, which was that he was cheering on what some posters saw as a genocide, saying it was the fault of palestibnians for electring hamas. that was my impression and my current memory and i wonit' relitigate that. the point is that there were posters on that thread whose family and friends were victims of that genocide. there is no way to express that view with decorum, no matter how politely it is phrased, because it is in substance a direct and invalidating attack. telling people that their friends' deaths at the hands of indiscriminate military bombing is actually their fault is obscene.

and that's the problem we run into again and again. 'trans people are confused derelicts" is an idea expressed here by some posters in less condensed form. there is no way to phrase that idea to make it "just a political opinion" because it is denying humanity of people. it is akin to "black people are inferior" which is also a political opinion but not one we would tolerate for many reasons. just as fuck you is a response to the substance of 'black people are inferior' regardless of the politeness with which that opinion is phrased.

i am not going to relitigate with batt boy. maybe i wrongly understood his intentions or my memory serves me pooorly. but that response is perfectly valid, i would argue, to a claim that posters' family members deserve what they get or are somehow responsible for their own torment.

3. that also brings up don boscos' complaint. there were two interactions, i think. the first was very early on, when i was worried that his "one thread per db story" would overwhelm the board. i didn't know about ignore thread. it has not been a problem and i havent said anything about them since then. i have nothing against the stories, they just don't speak to me and thats fine.

the second was his thread about the problem of the vertical negro. on that one, the nature of my objection was i think not correctly perceived, and responsiblity there lies in part with me. i didnt' epxress myself well ironically because i was trying to be polite. i think i struggle with that and do better when i just say what i mean. and what i meant was that the phrase "vertical negro" created an indelible image of a black man hanging from a tree. vertically. obviously that wasnt intended, but i thought the subject line that appears on the topic page shouldn't have that imagiery. cauise if you thought that was the referecne, maybe you don't open thr thread to read the discussion of a upsetting cibcept. whew mny hnd is gtrttig tired. sorry. i don't know if anyone else interprted it yhat way but if i did it stands to reason that others mnight, especailly others perhaps closer to the lynchings i thought were being referenced. [yes i have leanred from this board that lynching is borader than hanging but still the dominant cultural image that comes to mind of lynchings involves hanging).

all i asked was that he change the topic line, which he did and i appreciated it. i don't know whether it was gracious or begruging but he did it and that resolved my comnplaint. then the thread went on attacking me for a while, maybe because people thought i was objecting to the use of the negro word. that mystified me.

again, substantive decorum versus decorum in form. here the problem was that the form (use of the historical phrase vertical negro without regard to a contempotary reading) suggested something substantively obscnee. i dont think its much to ask that we not have thread topics with violent imaginery. that i saw that imagery there where otheras maybe didn't is a disagreement, and maybe i was ifiosyncratic but i think it helps illustrate the point here.
 
farce© said:
Profanity or a lack thereof isn’t a measure of civility.
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"The Indians send signals from the rocks above the pass
The cowboys take position in the bushes and the grass
The squaw is with the corporal, she is tied against the tree
She doesn't mind the language, it's the beating she don't need"

-Cool for Cats, by Squeeze
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I think he had a difficult time distinguishing his own opinion from a fact
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the main problem is that you dont know what is or isnt a fact because you rarely know what you are talking about. you are wedded to the idea that everything is opinion, because that's your justification for opining without knowledge. you dont get that other people can actually know things because we spend time learning. if you look at my posts, i tend to make factual claims about things i know and sometimes they arent fucking opinions. for instance boards of directors all over the world are filled with people just like hunter biden (as he appeared on resume): smart, trained professionals that arent in the industry. that is a fact. you dont know it, because you dont know corporate governance and that shouldnt be something to make you so insecure. it is a specialized field.

it goes wrong when you dispute that fact ob the assumption that you can arbitrate fact from opinion when you dont know anything about the topic. also your opinions about corporate governance are objectively worse than mine because i taught it and you dont know it.

for the record i have plenty of differences of opinion with other law professors about corporate law. i respect their opinions and am respectful in every way. you dont see them because they dont take place here for obviousa reasons. what you see instead is an expert trying to have a discussion with non-experts who refuse, out of insecurity, to respect that. that is the original disrespect,

its like if hubert were to post here about the team. whether hd is doing well enough is an opinion. "we dont run any offense" is not. if hd says, "these are the platys we run, just not always with good execution" that sghould be the final word on that issue. but posters here, including you, would get into an argument with hubert about whether we run plays, and then when he dismisses your nonsense speculation as foreclosed by the facts that he knows better than everyone, you complain that your opinions are being disrespected.
 
NYCBlueBlood said:
For whatever reason, that tends to get super's motor revving.
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because it is maga in microcosm. if people didnt feel a need to valorize their ignorance as an opinion as good as everyone else's, the country would be far better. we used to have respext for experts and that was when our politics worked fairly well. rush limbaugh started the degredation of knowledge and trump weaponized it.

of course reality does not care, which is why the ignoramuses who were cheering trumps tariff bs are about to have their faces eaten by inflation. i would rather be saying, by far, "trust me, this is a bad idea" than, "i told you so." alas the first was not heeded so we will get the second in spades.
 
Super,

Thank you for posting. It's good to have your input, even in limited form. Glad you are on the mend.

I believe all decorum is procedural and therefore substantive, which is a pithy way of saying that I do not understand your point. Please help me understand what you mean.

I'm fairly well left on most social issues, and even I don't think most people on the opposite side believe - or mean to say - that they are against DEI because of racial inferiority or that trans people are confused derelicts. There is at least a little nuance in there somewhere, and I believe decorum gives us air to explore whether there is more common ground than first appears or at least to better understand what the core disagreement is. That is what I believe the original thread creator is asking for. Now, on the fourth (third?) back-and-forth in a thread where there is no movement from a particular poster (<cough> Craig Neal sucks <cough>), my suggestion is to call it a day instead of continuing the interchange. But that's just me, I'm new, and you are free to disagree with my suggestion.
 
Huh? said:
Super,

Thank you for posting. It's good to have your input, even in limited form. Glad you are on the mend.

I believe all decorum is procedural and therefore substantive, which is a pithy way of saying that I do not understand your point. Please help me understand what you mean.

I'm fairly well left on most social issues, and even I don't think most people on the opposite side believe - or mean to say - that they are against DEI because of racial inferiority or that trans people are confused derelicts. There is at least a little nuance in there somewhere, and I believe decorum gives us air to explore whether there is more common ground than first appears or at least to better understand what the core disagreement is. That is what I believe the original thread creator is asking for. Now, on the fourth (third?) back-and-forth in a thread where there is no movement from a particular poster (<cough> Craig Neal sucks <cough>), my suggestion is to call it a day instead of continuing the interchange. But that's just me, I'm new, and you are free to disagree with my suggestion.
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i mean that there can be noxious expressions but also noxious ideas. avoiding both require different strategies.

1. bob: i oppose focusing education too much on our racist past because it promotes hate and not understanding.
anne: you are wrong and a pos for thinking so.

who is at fault here? anne, regardless of the truth of bob's opinion. this is what i mean by decorum in form. the you are a pos for thinking so is unnecessary.

2. bob: i oppose women voting because women are 'penis homes' [ed: to use the verbiage of an evangelical preacher].
anne: you are wrong and a pos for thinking so.

now who is at fault? isn't the pos comment perfectly justified here? in fact, isn't it required to tell the whole truth? simply saying you are wrong does not communicate the real problem with the comment, which is the misogyny. the penis home comment is at best a noxious opinion being weaponized against other people, punching down.

3. mixed case. "we need to keep trans women out of women's bathrooms because reasons."

in one sense that's an opinion, and it doesn't directly attack anyone. but when it comes from a party supporting rapists not just at the top of the ticket but interspersed liberally among the cabinet, it feels less like an opinion and more like targeted hate cloaked as something more benign.
 
gtyellowjacket said:
I never understood why people were so against that but I didn't want to ask. I always thought people just got mad that I was disagreeing with them.

No. I'm not the type of person that would just take a position to antagonize someone, although if my opinion antagonizes someone, I'm not afraid to express it.

I do tend to express my opinions more often when I do disagree with someone just because I think agreeing with someone is mostly pretty boring. There's nothing to discuss if both people agree.
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Agreeing on occasion lets people know that you are not simply disagreeing for sport. :cool:
 
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