Mob-Sourcing — the Prejudice of Crowds 178
An anonymous reader writes "ZDNet takes a look at how crowd-moderation can capture and reflect the prejudice of individuals. 'As more web content is crowd-sourced and crowd-moderated, are we seeing only the wisdom of crowds? No, we're also seeing their prejudice. The Internet reflects both the good and ugly in human nature. ... Any system relying on people implicitly encodes prejudices as well. In a world where one politician with a call girl is forced to resign and another is handily reelected, there is no hope for moral or intellectual consistency in crowd-sourced or moderated content.'"
Clearly (Score:5, Insightful)
Anyone who needed ZDNet to tell them this clearly hasn't been on Slashdot very long.
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Anyone who needed ZDNet to tell them this clearly hasn't been on Slashdot very long.
Yeah, just look at many of the moderations in the previous two articles on Linux and Apple.
Re:Clearly (Score:5, Funny)
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beat me to it; I figured there would be some comment about Slashdot groupthink (not 100% by any means, but very often a significant majority of people lean a certain way on here TBH)
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Re:Clearly (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, some serious works seem to indicate that when promotions are randomly distributed, an organization is more efficient than when promotions are distributed by regular managers. So we can now say with scientific proofs that comparing managers to monkeys is actually insulting for the monkeys.
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Citation needed.
CEOs of large companies do not generally get there on merit, but on the "old boys" network. I would not surprised if randomocracy generally produced equivalent results.
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Top-down control is good when making decisions quickly matters more than getting them right. Battle is the classic example.
Centrally planned economies (i.e. one corporation on a national scale) always go off the rails. On the other hand, everybody acting as individuals and simply contracting to each other would be way too inefficient. You need a certain amount of centralization; not too much, not too little.
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And this is a problem how? Golden Parachutes for the win, baby!
Face it the CEO doesn't know how to run the company either, they're just better equipped to abandon ship before the consequence of their mistakes has time to bite them on the ass.
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Slashdot actually had a reasonably well-implemented user moderation system, though. If you want spectacular fail, try (for example) Feministe's rather short-lived [feministe.us] user moderation setup, which made the site totally useless for its intended purpose of fighting oppression. (It was briefly a very good place for well-off white women to complain about how the uppity black women were whinging too much without hearing too much from them, though.)
regarding the reply to my signature (Score:2, Interesting)
Do you figure non-RIAA music is better? Most anyone’s “better” is different. Fair enough, make the quality distinction that fits you without getting into label ideology. If the indie model really makes it better, let that influence quality and then make the quality distinction directly.
I say similar things about open-source.
P.S. – do you listen to really good classic popular music? That kind of stuff tends to be on the major labels just as surely as the modern mainstream stuff you
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Cost for recordings is similar, but I'd agree that under-the-RIAA-radar concerts tend to be a lot cheaper.
I see the different types of concert experience as complementary rather than competitive, and I more see the small shows as extra-cheap than the large shows as extra-expensive. However, I'm not to magically like the cheaper stuff.
Frankly, enthusiasm for particular musicians has increased my enthusiasm for music in general, even wildly varying genres and business models, including loosening my pursestrin
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Exactly. Y'all may care (sarcasm noted), but I just don't feel the fury.
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I had a taste of that when the moderation system recently decided to revoke my permanent modding privileges which I have held for the past few years. I am guessing this happened since I recently modded a few posts up which were marked troll, but I found of value, although not following major opinion here. I knew it was highly dangerous ;)
So possibly the moderation system seems to self-regulate towards a majority opinion through meta moderation. I cannot say that I spontaneously can think of a way to improve the system though, ./ still has one of the better moderation systems around, but this deserves some tweaking at least.
I've learned that how something is said matters as much or more than what is said. I've been in the same situation many times where a post is marked troll, but I happen to think it had some merit. The deciding factor tends to be whether they wrote a well-thought-out, flame-free post, or just tossed off something that contradicts the mainstream /. thought, but didn't provide much in the way of support or explanation. Even if I think they may have a point, I still won't mod them up if they didn't write a p
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Anyone who needed ZDNet to tell them this clearly hasn't been on Digg [conservablogs.com] very long.
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With apologies to Churchill... (Score:2)
Slashdot has the absolute worst form of moderation, except for all others that have already been tried.
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Anyone who needed ZDNet to tell them this clearly hasn't been on Slashdot very long.
That's the first thing I thought as well.
Then I thought "Why is this story tagged 'craigslist' and not 'slashdot'?"
Because the author of the article listed something on Craigslist and it got flagged and removed. The article is his petty revenge against the system that has inconvenienced him.
Calling Hari Seldon (Score:4, Interesting)
Someone needs to give it a mathematical treatment.
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Someone needs to give it a mathematical treatment.
It's been done. Years ago, it was determined that the intelligence of a group of humans is inversely proportional to log(N), where N is the number of people in the group.
Actually, there has been some dispute over exactly what sort of (inverse) function applies, since in some groups, the leaders find ways to divide the group up into functional sub-groups. This produces a set of smaller groups, each with a higher intelligence than the entire group would have
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you need a math that can speak about itself consistently.
OT: Didn't Gödel [wikipedia.org] prove this to be impossible?
Wow! Have they discovered Wikipedia? (Score:4, Insightful)
Welcome back to reality newbs!
Who, ANYPLACE, promised you prejudice-free surfing on any site on the Internet?
And did you buy a bridge from them?
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Actually, the last guy who promised me prejudice-free anything to do with groups bought a bridge from me. And a couple of routers or switches IIRC, and at retail price when they were well-used and obsolete.
Do we need consistency? (Score:3, Insightful)
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Except moderation schemes are usually skewed towards hiding things. Look at slashdot: Say 10 people moderate the same post. Half of them like it, half of them hate it. So it gets -5 Troll and +5 insightful or something. It's still at 0 or 1. Nobody will see it.
Plus, people only read so many items on the average site. So say we have a news site where the highest ranked items go to the top of the front page (basically how Digg works? I think? Maybe?) Well, if 100% or 99% etc of the people like an article, it'
Tyranny of the Majority? (Score:2)
I propose... (Score:4, Insightful)
...not having RTFA, that the article is bogus.
Who's with me?
Re:I propose... (Score:5, Interesting)
...not having RTFA, that the article is bogus.
Who's with me?
Having read the article, the author was irritated that some listings on craigslist got deleted, thought that it was unfair, and spun that into speculation about how moderation through the crowd might encode some prejudices in some way that he hasn't really thought through.
So, it's not bogus so much as half-baked.
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I wouldn't use the word bogus, but it IS essentially one man's whine about how his stuff was deleted. The last two sentences sum it up for me:
That shows our freedom of speech is better protected when bought and paid for. The web is censored and manipulated in more ways than we know.
Entitled much? Craigslist is offering a service and if you don't like how their service is run, go elsewhere. But just because the actual customers didn't like your presentation, it doesn't mean CL is a corporate fatcat out to ruin the Constitution. If you want to write about mob rule, write about slashdot, or *chan, or wikipedia, or ancient Athens. As of now, th
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My favorite part was this line:
Craigslist claims that 98% of the flagged listings are, in fact, in breach of Craigslist standards. If that were true - and really, how can they know? - out of 1 billion listings that is 20 million who are wrongfully deleted.
Since 2% of "flagged listings" shouldn't have been, then 2% of all listings are wrongfully deleted? Perhaps you should re-check your logic.
I am Shocked! (Score:4, Insightful)
Shocked, I tell you, to find humanity in here!
And another great quote: a person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it.
Or, how about a big plate of SPAM? (Score:3, Insightful)
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/80beats/2010/11/02/follow-the-%E2%80%9Ctruthy%E2%80%9D-tweets-to-find-twitter%E2%80%99s-political-spammers/ [discovermagazine.com]
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QQ Less, Pew Pew More (Score:2)
This dude's butthurt whine about Craigslist is somehow cast as a contemporary political drama titled "Mob-Sourcing — the Prejudice of Crowds"? Am I in the .onion TLD or something?
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The reason we live in a Republic is because a true Democracy almost always degrades into mob rule and eventually an Oligarchy.
Any form of government where all citizens have a say can degrade into a mob rule - you can only try to increase the size of the mob that it takes to make it happen (by creating laws such as "need 3/4 votes to amend Constitution" etc), but you cannot avoid it except for a benevolent dictatorship (and those things stop being benevolent real quick IRL, even where they start as such).
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I don't know what the hell you're talking about, and neither do you.
You sure as hell can't RTFA though.
Our findings prove our findings are prejudice. (Score:5, Interesting)
Wait, so someone actually used crowd sourcing as a way to gather information for a study against the common wisdom of crowd sourcing -- which reveals that crowd sourcing is prejudiced?
They expect us to believe that their "wisdom" gained from "crowd" sourcing shows "'the wisdom of the crowd' is prejudiced", and theirs isn't?
Digg was a classic example of such bias. (Score:3, Insightful)
I noticed this effect the first time I saw Digg. A topic that started to trend would stay toward the top, and be seen my many more people, so it tended to trend even more, which means it stays near the top even more... and soon this bias becomes not just obvious, but enormous.
Theoretically it could happen even to a topic that was voted up by only a very few people, if they did it at about the same time. Which means that there is a certain amount of Chaotic nature to trending topics on Digg, and the eventual trends may bear very little resemblance to peoples' actual preferences, were a simple vote or some other measure taken for comparison.
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Read this before it gets modded down! (Score:2)
There's no way on slashdot to appeal this. In theory metamodding would catch it but I've tried it and it's boring (you don't know the context) and incredibly inefficient (because most mods are fine). It would be far better if you could flag a bad mod on a post and have *that* reviewed.
James Madison Said It First (Score:2, Interesting)
"Measures are too often decided, not according to the rules of justice and the rights of the minor party, but by the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority.
Alert to the dangers of majoritarian tyranny, the Constitution's framers inserted several anti-majority rules.
http://www.capitalismmagazine.com/politics/democracy/5496-Abhorrence-Democracy-and-Mob-Rule.html [capitalismmagazine.com]
Consistency is overrated (Score:2)
So-called "consistency" is overrated, because it often ignores context.
Often results in crowd response come down to some slight variance in conditions, that is subtle. The simple fact is that you cannot codify every possible scenario into a rule, so human judgements of anything can and will vary on ingrained cultural patterns of "what is right".
Moral consistency does not exist anyway (Score:3, Informative)
Sort of like a jury (Score:2)
Ya got these 12 people and theoretically they all have to agree on a verdict. But only one of them (in USA criminal cases) needs to vote against the crowd to cause a hung jury. Again, theoretically, nobody knows which juror it was, or what his reasoning was.
The difference between a court case and CraigsList, I guess, is that someone set up very specific ground rules about how a verdict was to be produced, and CraigsList just sort of said, "well, gosh, we never set up any clear rules about allowed posts, s
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Also called the illusion of confidence.
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I think politics has its own brand of crowd sourcing. This [smbc-comics.com] sums things up nicely.
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Jesus Christ is the resurrected Lord and Life giving Spirit.
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I guess so! I must have been wrong, and the crowd here loves the Lord! Honestly though, it doesn't matter to me how it's modded - I win either way.
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I guess so! I must have been wrong, and the crowd here loves the Lord! Honestly though, it doesn't matter to me how it's modded - I win either way.
How very convenient for you.
Re:Dead Fish always float only downstream (Score:5, Insightful)
I'd hazard a guess that your karma is in the cellar because your Gallileo complex prevents you from fully thinking thru what you are saying.
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40 points for claiming that the "scientific establishment" is engaged in a "conspiracy" to prevent your work from gaining its well-deserved fame, or suchlike.
Re:Dead Fish always float only downstream (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's true that a well written post will often get good moderations but it's still very slanted towards opinions favored by the crowd. A comment that isn't particularly well said stands a much better chance of getting a good rating if it doesn't agree with the RIAA or extol the virtues of IE6.
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But if you disagree with them on most things, why should they listen to you now? Karma systems like slashdot's do what we do in real life....learn from experience who is worth giving our attention to. There's good reason for it to work that way...given that our attention is a limited resource.
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I've seen people say similar things about Slashdot before, it always strikes me that the people who are complaining give extraordinarily bad examples of how "Slashdot's groupthink" works. I understand the point that you're trying to make, but in reality there is little reason to agree with RIAA and no good reasons to extol "the virtues of IE6". The last time I someone complaining about a specific example, they were upset because they were moderated down for claiming that environmentalists must be planning
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I wish I had some mod points for you.
Bad moderation does happen, but on the whole I think the majority of Slashdot readers are fairly open minded and intelligent. People here really seem to enjoy a lively discussion, but I think people here also have absolutely no patience for foolish or poorly structured arguments. Fringe perspectives get some credibility if they are argued coherently, but once a poster slips into inane ramblings people stop listening.
I definitely mod this way. I'm more interested in pr
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Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining that the Slashdot community refuses to allow dissenting opinions on its boards. I'm just pointing out the obvious fact that the community opinion is a poor gauge of truth.
I agree with you that Slashdot is remarkably good at not down-rating good comments because they go against the grain, but it does have a habit of up-rating poor comments that go with the grain. That's fine, it's just worth recognizing that it occurs.
It's a point clear to most people on Slashdot, but
Re:Dead Fish always float only downstream (Score:5, Interesting)
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Any rebuttal to your comment, even a very half-assed one, and especially the personal attack kind (!), is likely to get you, the parent poster, modded down. Happened to me many times, the mods are basically encouraging flamewars.
That's just basic "blame the victim" stupidity: The mod choice says "flamebait", and idiots mod down the person getting flamed.
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Compare that to Reddit and Digg which give you unlimited scope to mod people down and you end up with a mob mentality and a horribly narrow range of extreme viewpoint
Re:Dead Fish always float only downstream (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree with people all the time and am a downright asshole on here quite often. My karma is still high.
Of course, karma is an aggregate measure of reputation in a way. If your karma is low than you're likely a useless asshole to the community who is best gotten rid off. Not always but it's a good rule of thumb I'd say. Disagreeing with people all the time across every topic also likely means you're insane and delusional. Plus not contributing anything worthwhile, trivial to gain karma in various utterly neutral discussions, indicates you're here just as an ego trip and have no desire to help the community.
In general I found slashdot users actually quite good at moderating up intelligent and logical posts.
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I think number one thing that gets people modded into the gutter is misstatement of opinions as facts. They don't say, "I disagree because..." or "I think...", they say "you are wrong", which is very common in politics and incites flamewars and partisanship. It shows either a lack of humbleness and respect for others opinions or an inability to distinguish opinions from facts. It may fly in debate realms where emotion trumps logic like politics, but logic and reason triumph on this site.
Note that this is
Re:Dead Fish always float only downstream (Score:5, Insightful)
That is precisely why an my karma is in the cellar. Anyone who disagrees with the crowd anywhere, even on Slashdot, will get moderated into oblivion.
The reason why you have your karma in the cellar on Slashdot is because you're a creationist with a long posting history. The first time someone is seen making posts like that, they usually get a reply explaining why they're wrong. But when they persist in posting exact same arguments, already thoroughly debunked in countless past discussions, again and again - yeah, you'll get a Troll mod or whatever pretty soon.
Not from me, since I haven't seen mod points in years now (I think I post too much). But I'm not exactly surprised.
And, yeah, it's "groupthink" for sure. I don't see a problem with it, though. "Murder is bad" is also groupthink, and I'm certainly fine with that one.
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I haven't gotten mod points in like 2 years, either, and I don't post NEARLY as much as you. It's really disappointing. I've even tried things like meta-moderating and re-enabling ads. I wish there was some explanation of how it worked.
And to keep this on topic, Slashdot definitely suffers from groupthink on a lot of issues. While eventually insightful, but dissenting comments may rise up to a 3 or 4 score, they often start off being dropped to 0 with moderations like "overrated" when they don't even have
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And to keep this on topic, Slashdot definitely suffers from groupthink on a lot of issues. While eventually insightful, but dissenting comments may rise up to a 3 or 4 score, they often start off being dropped to 0 with moderations like "overrated" when they don't even have any other moderations yet. They have to climb back up from that which usually takes several hours or sometimes a day or two, and if it's not a particularly popular topic, that might never happen, and very often it doesn't happen until the story is pushed past the top of the front page.
Well, I do post a fair bit of "anti-groupthink" comments, and it's not as bad if you know how the system works. The way the bias manifests itself is that, usually, given two posts making a claim with no references or logic to back it up, you will see the one in line with the bias upmodded, and the other one downmodded. Simply put, a one-liner such as "Windows sucks!" or "Copyright is unfair!" is "5, Insightful"; while "Linux sucks!" or "Piracy is stealing, sue the bastards!" is "-1, Troll".
However, this is
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So, while there is a disadvantage, you can make yourself heard and get the point across if you are willing to do a bit more for it than the other guy - which is still much better than on your average topical forum. Of course, if your point is such that it cannot be readily argued by logic or backed by references, then you have no recourse - but then the problem is with the point, not with Slashdot moderation system.
That is the way one should expect it to work in any kind of environment. The group generally has a prevailing opinion of a subject because they have seen, read, or heard something that has prompted them to come to that conclusion. It is only natural that it would take some convincing to sway that opinion the other way. One should expect that the ability to sway the group is both proportional to the strength of the counter-data and inversely proportional to the strength of the opinion and the original dat
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One should expect that the ability to sway the group is both proportional to the strength of the counter-data and inversely proportional to the strength of the opinion and the original data from which it was formed.
It also depends on the willingness and ability of the group to consider rational discourse as a basis for a change of opinion. ;)
But that actually exists on Slashdot. Despite what some say.
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"Murder is bad" is also groupthink, and I'm certainly fine with that one.
Actually, that's not groupthink but a religious commandment.
One thing with those ten commandments, though. Of those that deal with human-human relationships and not the human-god relationship, they sure have stood the test of time. Lots of things were important then that aren't important now, but that list is pretty universal.
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I don't give a rat's ass about the ten commandments, and I still hold to the "murder is bad" idea.
And really? "Stood the test of time"? A few make sense. "You shall not kill", "You shall not steal", "You shall not bear false witness", "You shall not covet your neighbor's possessions" still work. The rest about a "relationship with God" are a bunch of useless drivel that date back not even to a time of belief in a monotheistic divinity, but to the polytheistic environment of a jealous tribal god.
But the wors
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Where's the "no slavery" edict? Where did the Abrahamic god promise to strike down those who treat other humans like cattle? Oh yeah, there's like "treat your slaves well", but it's about as humane as "you can torture prisoners, but only for this long".
There is no "no slavery" edict. Not everything that you were taught is bad is listed there, I only said that those things listed there are still relevant today.
Oh, and you do have slavery today. It might not be called "slavery" but today's servants are little different from what the ancients called slaves. Slaves were treated well, just as you would treat any other property of yours well. The idea of a slave being one who is perpetually whipped is an American image, towards their African-decent slaves. Ever
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The idea of a slave being one who is perpetually whipped is an American image, towards their African-decent slaves. Every the Jewish imagery of Egyptians whipping Hebrews is largely derived from that image. Americans didn't have that nice "treat your slaves well" edict.
Yeah, maybe God shoulda stuck in another commandment for that and then they would have. There are plenty of extraneous ones that could have been replaced by a more useful one like that. The three or four commandments that are relevant today existed in laws predating the 10 commandments, and in civilizations that had never heard of them. We obviously didn't need God to provide them for us.
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But your statement makes you a troll for trying to claim that something as universal as "murder is bad" is
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He didn't claim that they originated the rules, merely that they expressed them. Others have expressed them too. He merely noted that the ones about interpersonal relations (don't murder, don't steal, don't lie about others, don't covet what you don't have, honor your elders) have been things which most societies have agreed on for a long, long time. Hell, Bill and Ted said it well too: "Be excellent to one another" (I'm sure I got the words wrong.)
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You're religious, that's fine. You're christian, that's fine too. But the point you start making factual errors and claim ownership of a universal concept? And then get modded up for it? That's the point I have to call bullshit. So as to not ruffle your feathers too much, let me put it this way: There are the Mandarin, Indian, and Summarion words for murder. None of those peoples had any interaction with Moses or the commandments, so how did these groups of people know how to define murder?
I am not religious, not have I any Christian ancestry.
As for Mandarin, Indian, and Summarion rules regarding murder, I know nothing. I merely stated that the document on which Western society based their no-murder ethic upon is an amazingly universal document which is relevant not only to the time it was written, but to all time. In fact, you further the universality of the document by pointing out that it's message is relevant not only across millennia, but also cultures.
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No, it's actually quite possible to believe that "murder is bad" for better reasons than "because an all-powerful dude who lives in the sky said so, and is going to punish you if you don't obey."
I never said otherwise. I said only that it, like the rest of the document that pertains to human-human relations, is still relevant.
Are you so sensitive to positive aspects of religion that you just trolled yourself?
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No, it's actually quite possible to believe that "murder is bad" for better reasons than "because an all-powerful dude who lives in the sky said so, and is going to punish you if you don't obey."
I never said otherwise. I said only that it, like the rest of the document that pertains to human-human relations, is still relevant.
Are you so sensitive to positive aspects of religion that you just trolled yourself?
He gave a religious example as well with the five precepts, so it seems that religion is not the sensitive point. More like a sensitivity to dogma that attaches such significance to a rather shoddy list of supposedly divine commandments.
Re:Dead Fish always float only downstream (Score:4, Insightful)
Dissenting opinions are fine when they are substantiated. However, when the same opinion is repeatedly expressed without being substantiated, or when the arguments given in favor are obviously false (as they were reviewed and debunked when they first appeared a long time ago), and nothing new is added - such an opinion becomes mere boring drivel, and will get modded accordingly.
Re:Dead Fish always float only downstream (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting how you stretch what he said beyond it's meaning in an attempt to support your own point. Good example of how not to post.
OK, I got it - as long as the dissenting opinions are acceptable and not debunked, they are acceptable.
Yes, if it's been debunked then it's wrong and as such of low value. Glad to see we're on the same page.
Of course, if they were acceptable and had been approved by the authorities, they wouldn't be dissenting opinions, would they?
Yes, the mysterious secret alien authorities running slashdot and sucking out our brains wish to keep you in your place. Now shut up and stand still while they insert the straw.
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Now, I have no idea who the poster is that you're replying to, but the moderation here is often unthinking groupthink. A majority of people here start from a common basic premise for their thinking/logic on many issues. Anyone who begins with an opposing basic premise, even though they are a logical person, will end up at a much different conclusion than the majority. Groupthink then kicks in and that person is derided as illogical and stupid because because they ended up at a conclusion that seems illo
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Slashdot should have -1: Ad hominen, -1: Strawman, -1: Appeal to Authority etc..
In this case DNS and BIND might be modded "-1: Argument ad nauseam" instead of just troll.
People would have a field day "-1: Post hoc ergo propter hoc" they wouldn't know whether they should mod or reply with "Correlation is not causation!"
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Now, I have no idea who the poster is that you're replying to, but the moderation here is often unthinking groupthink. A majority of people here start from a common basic premise for their thinking/logic on many issues. Anyone who begins with an opposing basic premise, even though they are a logical person, will end up at a much different conclusion than the majority. Groupthink then kicks in and that person is derided as illogical and stupid because because they ended up at a conclusion that seems illogical to those who started from an opposing basic premise, and the moderation around here reflects that attitude.
Generally the minority does not acknowledge that they are basing their argument on incompatible axioms. If they do then they try to justify those axioms within the framework of the majority and as a result make a logical clusterfuck of an argument.
What does it say about our society when we, as a society, are eating our own because of our differences in basic premises? How is this sustainable? How is this good for society? If this keeps on in the same direction it will end in some type of civil war as civility between opposing points of view is rapidly deteriorating. Both sides will have their own thought police. Is that really a society any of us want to live in? If you don't like that society you're the only one who can change our current direction as the only way the current direction our society is taking can change is for individuals to change. Government can't do anything about it, other than try to legislate what point of view is allowed, and I don't really think anyone wants to go there.
A society requires generally unifying basic premises to function, what alternative do you propose? If one group thinks anyone who says the word "Bob" needs to be killed then will you let yourself be slaughtered if you say it? It's an extreme example but that's the
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How can an opinion be substantiated? Is an opinion not by definition an unprovable idea?
No, an opinion is by definition an unproved idea, but it doesn't mean that it's unprovable. Of course, once you prove it, it's no longer just an opinion. Well, I guess you could say that Slashdot is not particularly welcoming to "just opinions". Note though that you're still perfectly free to write them - your freedom to express yourself is not infringed. But you don't have a right to force the others to listen.
Oh, and an inherently unprovable idea is called "religious belief". ~
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How can an opinion be substantiated? Is an opinion not by definition an unprovable idea? If I express the opinion that Democrats are worse than Republicans, how can that be substantiated?
Ok, let me try an example. A substantiated opinion is one that has evidence to back it up, and no significant contradictory evidence. I could say something like, "My favorite team is the one to beat this season, because they've won their first seven games, and the next closest team has only won four. In the absense of contradictory information, that is a substantiated opinion. Someone else could have a different opinion, equally valid, such as, "This other team is likely better because they've had a muc
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic [wikipedia.org]
Without it, any argument whether held in your own mind or with another sentient being is just meaningless drivel.
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Confound you and your blasted Vulcan logic!
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Show us the post that got you modded out of existence.
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And then he wrote a comment on craigslist explaining how a non business can accept credit cards, and this article did get deleted.
Are you sure that Clinton lied under oath? (Score:2, Informative)
Clinton was asked, under oath, if he had a sexual relationship with Lewinsky. Clinton did not immediately answer the question, but instead asked what was meant by a "sexual relationship". He was told that a sexual relationship was a relationship where they had sexual intercourse [wikipedia.org]. Clinton then said that he did not have a sexual relationship with Lewinsky.
Clinton and Lewinsky had oral sex, but they did not have sexual intercourse. Clinton was slippery, but h
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"In a world where one politician with a call girl is forced to resign and another is handily reelected"
This in fact has nothing to do with "mob-sourcing". It is the inevitable result when one political party prizes the advancement of their agenda over the morality of their members, and the other does not.
No, it's the inevitable result when one politician prizes the advancement of his evil secularist socialist agenda over a morally principled capitalist country, and the other is on the ticket with a call girl.
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Pff. This is why "unnotable" material is deleted from wikipedia, because the material isn't notable to the majority.
So some articles, that people spent hours, if not days or months writing is deleted because one person thinks it's unnotable and gathers the meat puppets to kill the article. They succeed most of the time because the material in question isn't interesting to the nerds that run Wikipedia. But oh yes, we must have an article on every goddamn pokemon thing.
The pokemon articles and the star wars articles and the Simpsons articles and nearly every damn article ever written with the word "fictional" in the first paragraph is part of the problem - just the part that's harder to deal with. If you want to take that stuff on, feel free. I will applaud the effort.