It is appropriate to pause a moment to reply to RTH at TSZ:
>>your FYI / FTR posts are a bad idea. Here’s why:
- By not allowing criticism to be directly attached to them you are not proceeding in the most intellectually honest way.
- You keep relinking to them so criticisms have to be redrafted after every ‘reboot’
- You post on a blog that censors, edits and even DISSAPEARS whole commenters.
- No rationale or many times even acknowledgement is given by the moderators.
- The above are hallmarks of dogma, not honest inquiry.
If your ideas are good, they’ll hold up under scrutiny. Exposing them to pointed criticism may help you refine them.>>
The central problem with this is that it (tellingly) brushes aside highly relevant context of abusive threadjacking and insistent accusations/insinuations in response to a thread here at UD that began: “Let’s discuss . . . “
In reply, I decided it is time to revert for a little while to the older approach where articles would be met by counter articles, often in another publication entirely. (Where, BTW, the notion that such an approach is somehow dishonest would be laughable, save that it reveals the underlying rhetorical gambit of red herrings led to strawman caricatures soaked in ad hominems and set alight to cloud, confuse, poison and polarise the atmosphere.)
This, as it takes two to tango.
And, this occurs on a weekend where one of the unhinged is confirming on the ground stalking and implied threats against people connected to me in even fairly remote degrees, as well as now commonplace nasty and utterly unfounded lies and smears designed to attack me personally.
Pointed criticism, sir, is not an excuse to carry out or enable slander or strawman tactics that are tantamount to willful deceitful misrepresentation (as I just specifically addressed at no. 9 so far).
Where, on fair comment, the response clipped above comes across a lot like “he hit back first” by virtue of failing to give highly material context that is right there in the 32 comments in the threadjacked first article . . . the one that you did NOT link (where I also had to point out that there is another — too often unacknowledged — side to the “censorship” accusation story, dealing with insistently disruptive uncivil and outright disrespectful conduct, which gives a very different colour to what you are trying to stigmatise and imply guilt by association about):
An article that, from the opening words, was an invitation to civil discussion. Which, was met with a threadjacking stunt.
I, for cause, am unwilling to put up with abuse, slander, cyber stalking, on the ground stalking, implicit threats in such and enabling or pretence that nothing wrong is happening, under false colours of free expression and tolerance.
Your freedom to swing your arm ends where my nose begins.
And red herrings dragged away to strawman caricatures soaked in ad hominems and set alight to cloud, confuse, poison and polarise the atmosphere are not to be equated to fair critical scrutiny.
Where, there is more than enough time and opportunity on the Web, to show intent to engage in reasonable discussion, if such is desired instead of the threadjacking stunt that has led me to do a FTR series in response for a little time. (Where, notice, there has been no deletion of comments, no banning of commenters, only my own act to terminate threadjacking and take time, day by day to speak to specific concerns, often by way of reply to talking points that are linked and cited. And, the links to the posts are not changing, I am listing them day by day and citing the list of linked headlines in each onward article.)
So, let us see clear signs of serious, civil discussion and of a turning from enabling behaviour. END
PS: Series to date:
FYI-FTR: Part 4, What about Paley’s self-replicating watch thought exercise?
FYI-FTR: Part 5, on evolutionary materialism, can a designer even exist?
FYI-FTR: Part 9, only fools dispute facts (and, Evolution is a fact, fact, FACT!)>>