Okay, so in practice, what would you actually do differently than now? Don't get me wrong these are all nice words and all, but it's at a very general level. What are your actual proposals? — Agustino

My moderating practice has been on display for long enough. I'm really more interested in what other people think they are doing.

The level of absurd posts in the philosophy of science is an example of where this gap is clear that causes me to avoid it.

↪MikeL It is not poor conduct. If you think you are a wonderful musician but you sound like a damaged trumpet, having experts in the field tell you that you sound like a damaged trumpet may hurt your feelings, but it is probably a reality check that you need. — TimeLine

I agree entirely with both points. However, when someone performs open heart surgery on my ego without anaesthetic, I want them to have a very steady hand and know what they are doing; saintliness would be too much to ask, but I'd want them to have their sadism and aggression under close control.

I'm out to make the world substantially better, by promoting communication and mutual understanding.
— unenlightened

How's that going for you? — Hanover

You still here? Not very well I'm afraid. :p

Interesting question, glad you asked.

I'm out to make the world substantially better, by promoting communication and mutual understanding. Accordingly, my moderation priorities are directed towards filtering sense from nonsense, and kindness from unkindness, more so than spelling from mis-spelling, philosophy from non-philosophy, educated from ignorant.

If one was setting out to produce an archive of interesting dialogues, say, one's moderating priorities might be different. And that initial aim is where differences between too strict and not strict enough start to bite: strict enough for what purpose and in what direction?

By and large, it is unsurprising that the people who post on the site on average like the way it is run. It's a bit like asking meat eaters if they like meat. 'More meat or less meat, or just the right amount?'

A more interesting question would be, 'what are you trying to do on the site?'

What it would take to convince academia that they've gotten something wrong? — creativesoul

How can I convince you that this is entirely the wrong thing to try and do? I won't even try, but instead suggest just a small adjustment that will make things go more easily for you. When the salesman wants to sell you a new car, he doesn't bang on about how crap your old heap of rust is, he extols the virtues and benefits of the new, until you can see that there is no competition.

Most physicalists used to subscribe to some version of the stuff and structure ontology. There is stuff, and stuff is structured, but structure is not more stuff. The really hot physicists these days dispense with the stuff, and manage with just structure. So worse than information is physical, they claim that physicality is informational.

I meant "... necessarily right or wrong". Poetic licence. — Baden

I'm with the thought police. Can I see your poetic licence, sir? Do you verily have a rhyme for your necessarily? Recite after me:

This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
And add some extra, just for you.

But they were fucked up in their turn
By fools in old-style hats and coats,
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another’s throats.

Man hands on misery to man.
It deepens like a coastal shelf.
Get out as early as you can,
And don’t have any kids yourself. — Larkin

Unreadable thread.

The British Empire, let us remember, was not an humanitarian operation. You all have been capable of quite brutal behavior. — Bitter Crank

Hey, we're all whiteys here. I am a fucking long way from proclaiming the innocence of the British, either historically or currently. The human race is a murderous race, and the more and bigger the weapons, the more and bigger the murders. If we all had personal nuclear weapons, we would all be dead. What i am saying is that wanting to kill is not rare or incomprehensible, it's what every patriot will gladly do for his country, his race, his religion or his ego, and be admired by his fellows for.

The problem here is that reconciliation requires forgiveness. So, what happens then? — TimeLine

Well it does, to the extent that the agreement we reach is such. It may require restitution as well or instead. I'm thinking squaring accounts, reaching agreement. If we agree that I owe you, you can forgive the debt, or I can look to pay it, or both, but we might agree that I don't owe you after all.

I find forgiveness rather odd. In order to forgive, one must first condemn. It seems like an internal moral economy; you done me wrong, you owe me - but I'm going to forgive the debt. But then, I'm not going to forgive the debt until you repent, that is until you acknowledge the debt. This being a part payment? Or an undertaking not to do me more wrong? Perhaps forgiveness is a gift that can only be meaningfully given to one who feels a need for it.

Reconciliation is a more mutual affair; we reconcile our points of view of the past; we understand each other. It's not something I can do on my own, and it's not inherently unequal. It requires truth.

America is founded on mass murder. It's not an inexplicable aberration, but business as usual.

This partial list only includes mass killings of Native Americans. L A times tells me of some more incidents.

Rock Springs massacre: In 1885, a group of white men and women fatally beat and shot at least 28 Chinese immigrant laborers during a riot at a coal mine in southwestern Wyoming. Historians say the riot was sparked by growing displeasure over the mine’s practice of hiring Chinese workers and paying them a lower wage than American citizens.
Tulsa race riots: A white mob attacked black residents in Tulsa, Okla., in 1921 and burned down the Greenwood neighborhood, which was then the wealthiest black business district in the United States. Modern estimates place the death toll at 50 to 300 people, many of them shot.
Elaine massacre: Black men in Elaine, a small town in eastern Arkansas, met in the fall of 1919 to discuss how to collect more money for their cotton crops. During the meeting, a white man who was deputized was shot. In the riot that followed, as many as 200 black people were shot and killed.

How does dying encourage growth? — Banno

Compost.

Or, if you are an embryologist, selective cell death is the process whereby fingers and toes are differentiated. But suffering and death are not the same thing; to die is not to suffer.

The eternal cry of the toddler: "Why do you let me fall over, cruel Mummy?"

The Geometry of Philosophy.

Round like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
Like a snowball down a mountain, or a carnival balloon
Like a carousel that's turning running rings around the moon
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!

Like a tunnel that you follow to a tunnel of its own
Down a hollow to a cavern where the sun has never shone
Like a door that keeps revolving in a half forgotten dream
Or the ripples from a pebble someone tosses in a stream
Like a clock whose hands are sweeping past the minutes of its face
And the world is like an apple whirling silently in space
Like the circles that you find in the windmills of your mind!

Keys that jingle in your pocket, words that jangle in your head
Why did summer go so quickly, was it something that you said?
Lovers walk along a shore and leave their footprints in the sand
Is the sound of distant drumming just the fingers of your hand?
Pictures hanging in a hallway and the fragment of a song
Half remembered names and faces, but to whom do they belong?
When you knew that it was over you were suddenly aware
That the autumn leaves were turning to the color of her hair!
Like a circle in a spiral, like a wheel within a wheel
Never ending or beginning on an ever spinning reel
As the images unwind, like the circles that you find
In the windmills of your mind!
Writer/s: BERTHOLD BRECHT, KURT WEILL

Victor Spinetti reminded me that before the first world war, there were no passports or immigration controls. His grandfather walked from Italy to Wales to work in the mines. Now that's what I call free movement of labour. Hence the rather odd name for a Welshman.

To me, for example, the image of a father (an image of masculinity) does bring about inherent notions of tenderness, such as toward his kids, this alongside firmness when needed. This to try to say that the experiencing of love is to me as much masculine as it is feminine, though the two will sometimes express and react to it in different ways. Though, yes, being an owner of tender feelings might be viewed as weakness of being, non-masculine, in some notions of masculinity. — javra

Clearly you were not brought up to have a stiff upper lip with which to administer The British Empire. That whisper, 'Big boys don't cry' sends a shiver down my spine still. And google sent me to this article about male depression, which is very relevant to the op, and several others on this site.

Disagreeing with me is known as 'the enlightenment fallacy'.

My favourite lightbulb joke:

How many feminists does it take to change a lightbulb?

Wouldn’t self-proclaimed real dicks say that this song is for real pussies? — javra

Well the song depicts a man trying to persuade himself that he does not have tender feelings; a man trying to be manly according to a common image of manliness. It expresses the pain of doing that to oneself, and the impossibility of it.

On the one hand, we could argue sociologically about what images of manhood are promoted in a particular culture that men are pressured to conform themselves to. And on the other hand, we could argue biologically about what are the facts of manhood.

If we are arguing about the facts of manhood, then we need to accept the fact that men are very varied in their personalities, inclinations habits and identities. There are, in almost every culture, dandies and scruff-bags, aggressive and unaggressive, feeling and unfeeling, gays and straights, and so on.

If there is an argument about whether it is better to be a pussycat or a tiger, one might want to count the offspring, or one might want to count the populations, or one might want to read the Bible. However one measures it, one is moving from the facts to the images, and not merely describing but advocating. I'm with Bob Dylan on this:

Well, I try my best
To be just like I am
But everybody wants you
To be just like them
They say 'sing while you slave', and I just get bored
I ain't gonna work on Maggie's farm no more.

my initial question still stands in regard to the issue of masculinity — javra

Sorry, what question was that?

A song for all the real men...

I would say that that guy looks quite the opposite of masculine :P . — Agustino

The word you're looking for is 'feminine'. What is feminine there is the aesthetic concern with personal image over substance. Real men delight in their physicality without that narcissistic concern for the camera's gaze. Or so recent tradition would have it. We used to call men like that 'dandies'.

We have to act. Period. In doing so we are necessarily acting as if we are something because we are something, something that is both a result of and a cause of our actions. — Baden

I can own this by removing one word - well three, for grammar's sake:

We have to act. Period. In doing so we are necessarily acting as something because we are something, something that is both a result of and a cause of our actions. — unenlightened

I don't have to act as if I'm a logic chopping pedant, it comes naturally.

... it's just as futile to pretend that you can't be more than you are at least to some degree. — Baden

I call that 'learning' or 'applied ignorance', the magic whereby one can do what one cannot do. The pretence is that I am fixed, when it is only that I hold to a fixed image of myself.

You want to be a leader, for example, act masculine (to a degree). — Baden

Bah. When you say 'leader', I think you mean 'figurehead' - an image stuck at the prow of the boat - rather than the guy in the stern with his hand on the tiller. You want to be a leader, start steering the right course.

but, with masculinity, it goes to the deeper level of some sense of insecurity about one's self. — Posty McPostface

Yes it's a very deep root of identity. The self is made of such images, and being imaginary at root, is always insecure. This insecurity is intolerable, and 'un-masculine'. And so one acts masculine.

But one only has to act (as if) one was something, to the extent one is not that thing. If men are masculine, they do not have to act; if some men are more masculine than others, neither have to act. Folks act to escape what they are, which is futile, painful and self-destructive. Have a dick by all means, be a dick if that's what you are, but for God's sake don't feel obliged to act like a dick.

So, is it a deficiency in some emotion or feeling that causes (predominantly) men the need to express or display their masculinity in such a manner and way or is it an excess of some sort? How does one guide men to tame these animalistic spirits. Heck, I doubt animals are capable of such deeds and actions. — Posty McPostface

Well yes, I think you have it about right. Shall we say that a perceived deficiency, measured according to a faulty image of masculinity, leads to an exaggerated performance of the image, which is itself already exaggerated, and so to an excessive demand that others also perform to support the image? I think this is the best explanation of homophobia and the like - that even the possibility that another can deviate from the image is a threat to one's whole being. Thus, not to join in with the gauging and burning is to fail the image of masculinity.

It is perhaps in pointing out the weakness, the effeminacy, the sheeplike nature of such behaviour, that one might hope to guide others to have the strength to resist the images that are purveyed by society and the media.

Yes, it's a self fulfilling prophecy. What is masculine is what men do. Men, masculine men, sometimes wear make up, and skirts and heels and have sex with other men. Therefore that is masculine behaviour. Occasionally they castrate themselves, that is masculine behaviour. Sometimes they shave and sometimes they grow a set, and both are masculine behaviour.

In short, let the images and stereotypes follow you, rather than feeling you ought to follow them, let alone that you ought to oblige another to follow them on pain of being stabbed and burned. That too is masculine behaviour, but more to the point, it is repulsive behaviour.

Is there a certain way that we ought to express masculinity? — Posty McPostface

No. I take the view that if one is man, then whatever one does is an expression of masculinity. And I am a real man, so you can safely agree.

Me too like to play at linguistics. Me too want special treatment and blue suede shoes.

Let's not confuse syntax and semantics. — Sapientia

Me always uses both together in posting behaviours, so solly for conflusion. You step blody well in great big British Christopher Robin Wellington boots... question? Me like to evade sin taxes with some antics.

What about the Kurds? 90% are in favor of nationhood. — Bitter Crank

Yes, it's a very similar situation.But who organised the referendum in three countries? No one of course.
What I'm pointing out is the paradox that before you can count the votes, you have to establish the borders, so a vote to change the borders is always a fabrication. France seems to have changed the borders of the region that would have to vote in order to forestall the 'wrong' result. A better policy than nuking their own territory.

Self determination presumes the self.

Catalonia, Catalan politicians say, is subsidizing the rest of Spain. — Bitter Crank

Well here lies exposed the rather sordid reality behind the image of noble peoples struggling for their independence. It's all a power play; if Spain had the sense to move the capital to Barcelona, and rename the country Great Catalonia, then Great Catalonia would be Spain, and the poor regions of the South and centre, would not be itching to divorce themselves. Or perhaps, like Wales, re Britain, or like Britain re Europe, they would, such is the folly of identity.

Catalonians, aka "Spaniards", — Bitter Crank

Incidentally, Catalonia also extends sentimentally into France where there is also Catalan spoken, known by those who speak La Langue D'Oil (Parisian French) as La langue d'Oc. The region in question is also called Languedoc, though wiki tells me it has now been renamed Occitaine. So once Catalonia is independent, it will be wanting to annex that region of France too. They'll love that.

No one can be independent, ever.

Thing about independence votes, they only work to separate, not much to join together. Identity is always separation. No homage, no fromage; it's a replay of the civil war as farce; in a post ideological world, identity is the last great passion.

Typical Gruaniad, first they have an overwhelming majority, then many more, and moving in opposite directions. hugely divisive indeed.

The last Spanish civil war was a dry run for WW2, right down to the German saturation bombing of Guernica ... just thought I'd mention that.

Sorry, typo.

P(~J∨X∣D)≥P(~J∣D).

If J is Jones owning a Ford, and D is the evidence Smith is relying on, then the belief he holds highly probable is not really just J but J∣D, the probability of J given D. And it's dead easy to show that for any X

P(J∨X∣D)≥P(J∣D). — Srap Tasmaner

Yes, it's like betting on the favourite and buying a lottery ticket.
It works equally well if one is betting against the favourite.

P(~J∨X∣D)≥P(J∣D).

The more random shit you believe, the more likely you are to be right about something or other. But this does not amount to a system I would be prepared to try at the casino, or a justification for believing random shit.

shouldn't your conclusion be "If there is strong evidence that p, then p v q"? — Srap Tasmaner

It's not my conclusion, it's Michael's. I only provided the middle premise, to illustrate that his argument needed one.

If p is true then p ∨ q is true. Therefore, if there is strong evidence that p is true then there is strong evidence that p ∨ q is true. — Michael

The world is at peace. It is the mind that is restless.

So pooh-pooh with a "have fun" all you like. I'm content with my reasonable (and correct) account. — Michael

There is nothing I want to say to cause you any discontent. Perish the thought!

I love philosophy.

(That's an answer to your question, not a confession of perversion.)

Hello, welcome. Unfortunately I am old, not new. Sorry to disappoint.

Evidence is closed under disjunction introduction. — Michael

I take this to mean, for our purposes, that what works for truth also works for evidence.

Ok. Now you need to argue that, because that is what we are disputing. You still haven't presented a valid argument.

Adding to my argument changes my argument. I don't accept that second premise. — Michael

Yes, I am charitably making your invalid argument valid. You need another premise of some sort.

I will simply assert that evidence that I have hazel eyes is evidence that "I have hazel eyes or unenlightened has brown" is true. I think it would be absurd to deny this. — Michael

Cool. then we have no argument; you are pontificating, and I am absurd. Have fun.

That's not my argument. And I don't understand what that second premise is doing. — Michael

Apart from the second premise, it is an exact quote of your argument. The second premise is the hidden premise that would make your argument valid.