Transplanted from
here, where it was continuing and escalating an off-topic argument wherein I’d said I’d avoid further reply. I can’t stop the argument from escalating, since others are involved; so I will transplant it instead.
This thread is self-moderated, because there are too many trolls on this forum; in the interest of fairness, for this particular thread, I will
not censor replies by poGium, or censor other replies simply on the basis of disagreement. [Edit again: Undid a thread subject edit which was not necessary after all.]
I'd love to be an alt of nullius.
Can you tell me exactly where I wrote that you are nullius alt account? That's the problem with this thread. It's not just about alt accounts that abuse the Merit system, but also accounts that abuse the Merit system, which are not alt accounts (between friends). And in my opinion, this is clearly happening. Friends who give other friends sMerits.
Well, Alia, were I your alt, then I’d be so much prettier. Also, I would get paid to gratify myself. Also, I would be able to gratify myself whilst receiving lessons from me in “the techy crypto stuff”.
By the way, congratulations on having invented Bitcoin! (satoshi = nullius = alia)
And again. Where do I write something about alt account?
Can you tell me where either Alia or I said you did? Your initial complaint vaguely alleged that we were “very suspicious”. Another poster raised the alt-account issue in the sense of “obviously not”. I’ve recently been accused of being both Lauda and Satoshi. Alia and I have now been making fun of the idea. Laugh. It’s funny.
(For the record, I think that you have a grudge against Alia
I have no grudge against her or you.
I posited a grudge, because you had materially misrepresented her as if seeking to by drugs online:
About every week she opens a new thread. Either she wants to sell something (herself (no reproach!)) or she wants to buy drugs, or she wants to borrow money (in my opinion, for the strangest reasons
) and so on. Honestly she seems very suspicious to me.
Any reasonable reader would infer from that that she was buying drugs online,
which she was not doing in any way, shape, or form. This misstatement by you was either careless to the point of negligence, or malicious. I lean toward the latter, because
you snipped from your reply to me the part of the quote with a link to the pertinent thread, so as to prevent readers to assessing the situation for themselves.You quoted as such:
(For the record, I think that you have a grudge against Alia
...whilst omitting this important context (boldface here supplied):
(For the record, I think that you have a grudge against Alia, me, or both of us.
You grossly misrepresented Alia’s posts in another thread (discussion is halfway through the linked post).), I myself snip quotes hard—but I am always careful to do so
fairly. (I do not trim down quotes here, because it’s a thread transplant; and I want for readers to see everything poGium wrote.)
She has shown me in her thread what morality she has in terms of girlfriend and boyfriend. I can not respect people who cheat on their partners! In her thread she has written that cheating is only bad when the other person finds out.
Why thank you. I don't condone cheating,
but what she doesn't know won't hurt her - pretend you're watching ordinary porn. I wouldn't mind if she joined in, either
You have evidently never heard the aphorism that “the prostitute
0 protects the virtue of the wife”. That’s ok. It is usually only known to leaders, moral/political philosophers, and others who must grapple with the bare fact that the vast majority of men will never be satisfied with only one woman. In a society which purports to be monogynous (
not a typo—look it up), some sort of hypocritical pressure release valve is necessary; otherwise, many men would pursue the nearest available “other woman”, such as the neighbour’s wife. This is one of several reasons why prostitution has been formally discouraged, but tacitly tolerated throughout history in many (if not most) civilized societies which purported monogyny.
Whatever you might be told at church, I suspect you’d much prefer for your neighbour to ogle Alia online—rather than getting wound up to the point of trying to scheme to seduce your wife. Yes, that’s dichotomy; but those who understand human nature will know, it is not a
false dichotomy.
(0. Alia’s not what many people consider a prostitute, since she only does this online. I myself will avoid the hairsplitting. Anyway, I prefer calling her my lovely
meretrix. Advantage to me: I don’t expect that she would ever be in the least bit interested in my even
pretending monogyny. That’s important to me, because I am Mr. Principled: I don’t lie or cheat. That’s right, I’ve never cheated on a woman in the sense of going promising one thing and doing another. I simply have never promised a woman that I’d be monogynous. If a woman dislikes that, she is more than encouraged to seek elsewhere from the get-go.)
But let's get back to the merit system.
In this thread, the OP asks if it's okay to give a friend sMerits. The answers are clear, because it is said that you can give sMerits to a friend as long as the posts are high quality.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2835874.0While we will not be directly moderating this, I encourage people to give merit to posts that are objectively high-quality, not just posts that you agree with.
In addition, theymos writes that you should give sMerits to posts that have an objectively high quality and not on posts you agree with. So as I understand it, you should not see the merit system as a "Like" button, but distribute sMerits to posts that have a high quality.
*sigh*
There is no way to prove a negative.
And now we look at this post. Did you give a sMerit here because it shows a high quality or because you (as always, it is ONLY nullius) agree?
First of all, you’re mixing different issues. Deliberately, it seems.
You started this by
formally accusing Alia (curiously, not me) of merit abuse,
1 in a thread where
DT members are actively red-tagging merit abusers. To my knowledge, no DT member has
ever red-tagged a user for (mis)using the merit system as a “Like” button. Given the
inherent subjectivity involved in a merit award, such a thing would be impossible to enforce! Then to support your argument, you quote
theymos saying what he would “encourage”—right after he said, “we will not be directly moderating this”.
(1. I mean “formally” in a standard format, replete with a section titled “PROOF”. The standard-form part of your accusation only listed Alia’s profile and merit summary. Later,
obiter dicta, you said, “I think you should watch them” (thus including me).)
On the one side: DT members (not moderators), enforcing one standards. On the other: theymos encouraging a different standard, but not moderating or enforcing it.
Second of all—well, as I said and you quoted:
I am not obligated to justify my merit award judgments
I did before, because I felt like it. Now, I won’t bother; for you have not displayed even the slightest comprehension of
any of the posts whereby you’ve questioned my judgment. Readers can make up their own minds.
Third of all, I myself don’t buy into the pretense of total objectivity in merit awards. It is neither desirable, nor humanly possible; and although objective factors should weight heavily, there will always be
some level of subjectivity in such a thing.
By way of analogy: It is possible for an educated reader for an objective reader to discern the fundamental distinction between good and bad poetry. But even the most intelligent, discerning readers will not choose the same poems as their
favourites.
sMerit supply is limited. Favourites must be chosen. I myself look for posts which have a baseline objective level of meritoriousness, then perforce choose my “favourites” between them based on a mix of subjective and objective factors. Whereas I am more capable of objectivity than most people are, I think I do fairly well with that.
I am not obligated to justify my merit award judgments
What bothers me about the whole thing additionally is the double standard of some DTs. As I mentioned earlier, such a behavior is
tolleriert, but on the other hand, other people are given a negative tag, because they get sMerits, which could have the same cause, as in this case.
(Red-quoted word addressed below.)
There’s no double-standard. People who post junk and pump their merit score by trades with friends get red-tagged. Friends and otherwise-related people who make generally high-quality posts are not red-tagged for finding each others’ posts meritorious.
The part you leave out in your allegation of a double standard is that the people who get red-tagged
are posting garbage, and/or awarding merit for their friends’ garbage. The omission is typical of people who whine about DT actions. Usually, they whine for a reason—
cui bono? Quoting you: “That is very suspicious... I think [DT] should watch [you].”
So, on the face of the matter, we’re talking about a 19-year-old who has never tried drugs and is curious about them. That’s it. (How many 19-year-olds have never tried drugs, including marijuana?)
I never said that I find it reprehensible that she takes drugs. It's her decision, why should I care? I only mentioned it because she opened a thread to it.
Many people would find it reprehensible if she were trying to buy drugs online. (
That includes me, by the way.) You misrepresented her with an insinuation that she was doing that—that she was doing something which
many, many people (including me) would find reprehensible.
You also misrepresented her as doing something
illegal. Actually,
you misrepresented her as doing something which would be a death-penalty crime in her country—as she has openly disclosed in the drug-related thread you omitted linking. (There, she made it profusely clear that she would never possess drugs in her home country, ever—Amsterdam OK, at home
not.) I myself don’t give a damn about “law”; but misrepresenting her as doing illegal activity would make her look very bad
to most people.
I find it interesting that you’re so outraged that a virtual
meretrix does camshows for men who are cheating, yet you seem to think that drug use is none of anybody’s business (you said it’s “her decision”; so I suppose it must be a so-called “victimless crime”,
ja?). I find that morally backwards, insofar as drug use is both individual and social poison—whereas what Alia does is really quite harmless.
Given the attitude about sex, I’d ask if you were American; but your inadvertent use of the word “tolleriert” (quoted above in red) indicates a native speaker of the German language. Interesting.
