The general lack of punctuation didn't help his case, but he wasn't banned for that or his love of Charles Manson, but overall low quality.

I looked through his history. He didn't make the grade. I don't really know much about his opinions.

Let's keep this clean and on-topic folks. :)

Banned @OmniscientNihilist for low quality.

Cheers for that. Any final efforts, folks? And then we'll get to choosing (and we'll make it fully transparent how we do that).

I don't particularly like threads calling for a Banning of someone. — Amity

I don't either. This could easily have been deleted. In future everyone, please use PMs and flagging. And this has now been dealt with by PM. Thanks.

@Maw, modded, tone it down a little please.

It's a more formal context, so moderation will be stricter. But as only chosen posters will be interacting with Massimo, we don't expect a problem.

A couple of his posts were reported and I deleted them for being too personal. That's the type of thing that could get someone banned if it was a pattern because it could be considered trolling. But just being an unpleasant dick isn't in itself a banning offence. I'll raise it in the mod forum.

This discussion was merged into Donald Trump (All General Trump Conversations Here)

I am so freakin' spaced out on markup right now. I never want to see a square bracket again. :nerd:

But he didn't want a quid pro quo, he just wanted the Ukraine to do the right thing, which was to publically announce the launch of a fake corruption investigation into the guy who happened to be his main political rival for the presidency and 12 points ahead of him in the polls. What on earth could Trump possibly have to gain from that? :lol:

Nice analysis. :100:

couldn't you include a link to the Resources section. — Amity

Not a bad idea. :up:

Cheers, Amity. I'd be concerned about overloading the guidelines (it's enough trouble to get posters to read them as they are) but I might put a version in resources ("How to Write an OP" or something).

The only thing I would contest is that I think one doesn't have to have a position on an issue and defend it in an OP; instead, one could ask an open-ended question or suggest a topic for discussion. But motivation, background, focus, etc. - all that is important. — SophistiCat

There's a bit of flexibility there. A tentative position would be enough for me. But I suppose the real crux is that because the OP writer is primarily responsible for their discussion, they should be willing and capable of leading it or the danger is no-one will (which, without mentioning any names, has definitely happened). Again, a flashlight—even if the batteries are dodgy. There are some exceptions; we have a specific Question sub-category, for example, where the whole idea is to be confused about something; and some subjects might be more speculative just by their nature. But what I've outlined would certainly be my general idea of good practice at least.

No worries.

We've committed to getting back to Massimo with more details within three more days, and I think we'll have five good questions by then, so that's the provisional deadline, I guess, unless one of the the other mods has a better idea, which they might. The tricky part will be choosing which questions to run with. We haven't finalized that aspect of it yet.

Oh, thanks, tim!

I don’t know exactly what my position is because I’ve just stepped into a dark room — Brett

Ok, but that's not what we want here. No dark rooms unless you've got a flashlight.

Probably naive there because generally the site is more combative ... but i don’t think it allows for differences in approach or personalities, etc. — Brett

It's not necessarily about personality. Being able to outline and defend a position does not make you combative, it makes you able. If you're not, to inflect a shit slogan: Just don't do it. Wait until you are. In the meantime, there's the learning center or just read and study and contiribute more to others' discussions. There's no shame whatsoever in not starting discussions. They're hard work and supposed to be hard work.

It's going to be fairly direct because we get a lot of stuff like this, especially in Philosophy of Religion, and I would like it to stop, so it's not just aimed at you, it's not meant to sound as harsh as it probably will, and there's no need to be discouraged by it. I'll try to give a bit of help after the critique.

Your OP:

Can God kill himself?
Does our ability to contemplate suicide and then carry it out suggest a measure of profound development in our evolution? Is it the ultimate act of a conscious being, to turn back on itself, to destroy what it is?

Animals don’t seem to do it, (I’ve heard of things, but the evidence is hazy) and if they could how would they do it, a gun, a knife? Are they even aware that they have a life that can be taken, let alone take it themselves?

And, in evolutionary terms how did this happen, why does suicide exist? Isn’t it contrary to the fight for life, ending the trajectory of your own genes? — Brett

So...

Can God kill himself?

My first thought: If you believe in God, the question doesn't arise. If you don't, it doesn't matter.

Does our ability to contemplate suicide and then carry it out suggest a measure of profound development in our evolution?

Relevance to questionably relevant OP not established.

Is it the ultimate act of a conscious being, to turn back on itself, to destroy what it is?

I have no idea why it would be. Is it the ultimate act of a conscious being to wear shorts? Have you got something of substance to say here?

Animals don’t seem to do it, (I’ve heard of things, but the evidence is hazy)

So, do they or not? And it's relevant why?

and if they could how would they do it, a gun, a knife?

That might be hard for a penguin. I would suggest neither.

Are they even aware that they have a life that can be taken, let alone take it themselves?

Don't ask us. We're still trying to figure out the God-animal connection here.

And, in evolutionary terms how did this happen, why does suicide exist? Isn’t it contrary to the fight for life, ending the trajectory of your own genes?

For who? I thought animals didn't do it. And God didn't evolve. Oh, we're talking about people now. So go on then.

Wait, that's it? :confused:

----

How to improve it:

THE QUESTION
If you don't have a clear well thought-out question or claim, you don't have an OP. So, have one and one of some importance (at least to you) in mind. And know and be able to explain why it's important as its importance might be questioned.

THE CONTENT
One easy way to structure an OP based on a question is as follows:

a) Background information

• What is the question and the context of the question (historical or otherwise)?
• Is the question very controversial? If so, why?
• How have others answered the question?
• What's your motivation for asking the question?

etc.
(This is all part of establishing why we should care about the question)

b)Thesis
What is your position on the question?
(You don't have to go into full detail here as you can do that as the discussion progresses, but you could give a summary of the main reasons for your stance.)

c) Lead in
What do you want from the discussion?
Make any clarifications you need to here. (For example, if people commonly answer this question with a misunderstanding, here's your chance to head it off at the pass).

And maybe most of all, your OP should be about a specific clearly-defined topic that you stick to. If you can't even stay on topic in the first post, it's already a bust.

You can do all that and do it well in as little as 200 words.

Hope that helps.

Coming up.

Deleted for low quality.

By the way feedback goes in Feedback. Not here. Moved.

What we could do is let Massimo know what's been contributed and give him the option of looking further at this thread and Leo's discussion if he chooses to start one. If Massimo does take a look and reply, it would be a nice bonus (though we'd certainly be happy with him just getting involved with the five questions we choose, which is already a significant undertaking).

Ok, but @leo put that discussion in one of the philosophical categories first, please (if you want to do it that way). We'll keep the guest speaker category clear for now.

Questions go in this discussion only, please. And, sure, you can add a critique. But please make it of a reasonable length. Prof. Pigliucci's time is likely to be limited and we want to share it as evenly as we can among posters.

Just to add that we appreciate all the input and effort made here and apologise in advance to anyone who is not chosen. Again, there's a limit to what we can put forward based on our original invitation and if anyone's question doesn't make it through, it shouldn't be taken as a negative judgement on it. We've made the process as open as we can at least.

That would be great. Cheers. :up:

Yes. :cheer:

(So, in the end, there will be about five separate discussions in this space by five different posters which Massimo can respond to, but again only the posters chosen will be able to post in their respective discussions while anyone wishing to comment on them while they're ongoing can post here.)

We would like everyone who would like to converse with Massimo to write a post here in the form of a question/inquiry into an aspect of his work. This post should be detailed enough to use as an OP. No categories are necessary (although if you want to headline your OP with a category it's fine). We will pick about five of these posts and allow the chosen posters to start their respective discussions with them. Massimo will then be able to read each discussion and reply to the posters in question. The discussions will not be open to everyone to comment on but everyone can view and comment here as they wish. Hope that makes sense.

:up:

What does it matter what we call ourselves, left, right, moderate, libertarian, authoritarian, etc. if our ideas are the same, or if we agree? — Harry Hindu

It doesn't necessarily matter at all. My closest real-life friend labels himself as being on the right, but we agree on plenty.

I'm hoping Baden is working on the OP of his new thread. I will wait until that starts and add this to my responses. — Harry Hindu

It might be a while as I've got a lot of other stuff, including admin stuff here, to do. But I'm definitely lining it up.

No, it's way more complicated than your unsourced-helpfully-coloured-diagram-which-I-have-zero-reason-to-accept-as-definitive suggests.

We'll put your suggested questions in the discussion we're going to start later. Please bear with us.

Baden seems to be grumpy, so I say we stick with one of the questions posed earlier being: — Wallows

No idea why you think I'm grumpy. I'm happy with how things are going. Anyway, we've got everything under control and will make announcements in due course.

Libertarians are the only true liberals. — Harry Hindu

You can categorise that whatever way you want. There are serious issues concerning freedom in both schools of thought, with the libertarian attempt to co-opt the concept particularly problematic. The left needs to assert itself in this area because it has a much more legitimate claim to be the ideology of freedom than either of the above. But I'm not going to follow that up here. I'm considering starting a separate discussion. If I do, you may feel free to come along and lose the argument there. :wink:

You asked me a hypothetical about Biden. I answered. I'd flush him down the toilet as quick as I would Trump. So, you can continue doing your White House line re Trump as long as you like. I'm not interested in arguing with that.

If Biden used the state apparatus for personal gain like Trump did, yes, of course. What possible justification for letting someone do that could there be?

Anyone who is as corrupt as Trump in this respect should be impeached if they hold a public office and prevented from running for one if they don't. Who they are or what side they're on doesn't matter a bit.

I mean biological systems. — Roxanne Kelly

It works the same. Physical bodies are biological systems.

What is gender according to you? — Roxanne Kelly

As I said above, it's a social construct. I mean you can use it interchangeably with biological sex in a loose way. But if you're talking about anything of importance, it's best to keep the terms separate for clarity. That's another way of saying I go along with the standard dictionary definition:

"Either of the two sexes (male and female), especially when considered with reference to social and cultural differences rather than biological ones. The term is also used more broadly to denote a range of identities that do not correspond to established ideas of male and female."

https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/gender