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Have you ever had a discussion with a person who in no case accepted your arguments? A person who doesn't seem to understand any of the arguments you bring up? Someone who presents a totally ignorant and usually intolerant opinion he wants to be heard but whose opposite opinion in his opinion should never be heard?
The idea to this blog came to me this morning, after remembering something an old friend told me. I decided to write down my thoughts here, because I figure this to be a forum of common sense and no tolerance - no tolerance might seem to be in conflict with the 3rd question, but you'll soon see what I mean. If you could answer the first questions with a "yes" you might already know where I am getting to with this entry's title, if you don't: join me - I have to back up a bit in the overall context and story.
Media. The beginnings of the internet were intellectual. It was a small number of people who connected to the world wide web, usually intellectuals seeing the internet's potential to interchange opinions with like-minded, interested in knowledge and the exchange of funded opinions, around the globe.
The world wide web grew, and following history's tradition to commercialize and dumb down media with growing user-numbers, dumb people poured in and as well used the internet's potential to organize.
Everyone started stating their opinion and while this isn't necessarily a bad thing, most of them were crude products of simpleminded. In a big group of people who actually know what they're talking about, these persons would usually quickly be told about their mistake and they'd realize it as such. However, with groups of dumb people forming, who think that shouting out their opinion repeatedly makes it more valid, "conversion" becomes a nearly impossible task.
The process of conversion is being reverted. You might think "Ok, there are two groups who stay divided; there's no problem", but unfortunately this is not the case. Any intellectual who tries to get into those aforementioned groups to bring the people to terms, will soon realize that it is a futile undertaking. However, this is not the case for the opposite site. Trolls (now actually calling them by their name) are everywhere and they won't listen. They want to bring people to "their terms" and want to be heard. And we listen and give them the platforms to do so. Although we are not listened to. This shouldn't happen.
We're not a minority and their bullshit cannot be forced upon us.
I don't know if I was able to express myself correctly in this entry, I am unsure about it, but I hope at least some know what I am talking about. I hope to be able to engage in a discussion about this through this thread.
And just as an example what I mean with "organized dumbness" --> http://www.pi-news.org/#
I feel bad for actually giving them clicks with this...
Edit 2: If you speak German, you might be interested in a blog post concerning this matter of the friend who inspired me to this: http://hinterwaldwelt.blogspot.com/2011/07/manifest-2011-die-dummehit-explodiert.html
 
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Good God you sound so snooty in this blog post. You can't just separate the "intellectuals" from the "dumb people"-- like you actually can't just do that. According to dozens of Constitutions of many different sovereign states as well as the Geneva Convention, all human beings are born with individual human rights which cannot be infringed upon legally by any organization or state. Categorizing a mass of individuals into an "intellectual" or "dump people" group is one step short of depriving rights to the "dumb people," a group which you imply is inferior.
I don't care if you don't like people who troll. I really don't, but the internet wasn't made for you. You own no portion or share of the internet, and you should stop acting as if you are better than other people. Free speech is essential to a free nation. The birth of this idea, along with generations of philosophers and statesmen, gave birth to modern, western democracy.
Next, you completely misunderstand the concept of trolling. Do you honestly think that all of the dumb people on the internet are, by definition, trolls? To troll is to try to get a reaction out of somebody. Trolls are not driven by a vacuous need to shout moistly every stupid sentence they manage to string together, they are driven by a need to take pleasure out of other peoples pain. It's not stupidity, it's entertainment. A successful troll makes people angry, hence the "lolumadbro?" meme. I love trolling, and I am not an idiot.
You may not be in the minority, but before you make a post on TL about your "superior intellect," make sure you understand who you're persecuting and the group of people about whom you're talking.
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First when I saw the title, I thought it was about BW. And I am totally not going to click the second link, I don't trust things that have "manifest" in it.
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According to dozens of Constitutions of many different sovereign states as well as the Geneva Convention, all human beings are born with individual human rights which cannot be infringed upon legally by any organization or state.
And this is precisely why the world is filled with so many feel-entitled good-for-nothing scumbags.
Not saying you're one of them or anything like that, but for all the merits of democracy, the whole 'equal rights for everyone' thing has been taken way too far in the last few decades.
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On September 10 2011 20:36 Zombie_Velociraptor wrote:Show nested quote +According to dozens of Constitutions of many different sovereign states as well as the Geneva Convention, all human beings are born with individual human rights which cannot be infringed upon legally by any organization or state. And this is precisely why the world is filled with so many feel-entitled good-for-nothing scumbags. Not saying you're one of them or anything like that, but for all the merits of democracy, the whole 'equal rights for everyone' thing has been taken way too far in the last few decades.
If you're going to give people Human Rights and freedom based on their merits as a human being, who decides who is worthy of rights? The rich? The powerful? The whole 'equal rights for everyone' has not been taken too far-- the whole 'equal rights for everyone' hasn't been taken far enough. There are people in Somalia, people in Sudan, in China, in North Korea, being persecuted, being slaughtered by the score, for NO reason at all.
Archibald MacLeish: "There must be thousands [being needlessly persecuted]! ... Thousands == not with camels either: millions and millions of mankind burned, crushed, broken, mutilated, slaughtered, and for what? For thinking! For walking round the world in the wrong skin, the wrong-shaped noses, eyelids: sleeping in the wrong city-- London, Dresden, Hiroshima. There never could have been so many suffered more for less."
In fact, I'm horrified that you could even say that the whole 'equal rights for everyone' thing has been taken way to far. Look at the holocaust, look at US internment of the Japanese, at Guantanamo bay, Tibet, North Korea, apartheid, the segregated south, look at all of these places where basic human rights are being taken away from people and tell me HOW THE HELL there is too much concern for equal rights?
EDIT: added the MacLeish quote
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I didn't understand any of this.
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How did we arrive at human rights, suddenly? I thought the OP was just complaining about youtube comments and such. Everybody knows those are stupid. And yes, there are a lot of retarded websites and idiots on the web. So? I don't really see the point. I stopped obsessing over the stupidity of humans when I was 16.
Also, more to the point: How do you classify who is "intellectual" and who is "dumb"? I see no obejctive criterion for that. Of course you could IQ-test everyone but where do you draw the line? And intelligent (high IQ, I mean) people do stupid things as well. I do stupid shit all the time and I consider myself intelligent. Isn't it human to make mistakes? Maybe the people who post stupid shit on the net are really smart and likeable guys in real life. Who knows?
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I might have misused the term "troll" here, as I was using it I was merely thinking of the way trolls behave and not thinking about their motives.
Also, I am not saying dumb people are some sort of subhuman being and I am not trying to deprive them of their human rights, I am well far away from that. The point is, that that what you misunderstood as my implication or my intention, is exactly what "they" do. While they express their opinion, they try to prevent the expression of the opinion of dissenters in addition to fighting for their own freedom of speech whenever they feel attacked by exactly those dissenters.
I do not want to stop those people from expressing their opinions (even though I can't deny there are some people I'd stop if I could), I want to tell you that there is a double-standart in biased media, which is not being fought against.
I can't give you precise examples, but I am often astonished by the way people absorb agitating articles and media coverage about the Islam, about the so-called "global warming lie", etc and then think they are actually informed enough to discuss about it and spread what they think is correct. They don't know and won't accept the fact that they are ill-informed.
About me trying to segregate "dumb" from "intellectual" people. There in fact is a way to (theoretically) determine each of these groups.
Intellectual people know they're dumb and they will never be able to fully grasp the concept of everything, but will embrace any opportunity to broaden their knowledge anyway. Dumb people don't know they're dumb. This is a weird construct, I know. But it's the idea behind it.
This whole thing might feel pretty radical and I'm actually sorry about that. I just don't have found a way to talk about this topic without sounding radical and/or offensive to people. It's delicate, as you might agree.
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On September 10 2011 20:43 mbr2321 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 20:36 Zombie_Velociraptor wrote:According to dozens of Constitutions of many different sovereign states as well as the Geneva Convention, all human beings are born with individual human rights which cannot be infringed upon legally by any organization or state. And this is precisely why the world is filled with so many feel-entitled good-for-nothing scumbags. Not saying you're one of them or anything like that, but for all the merits of democracy, the whole 'equal rights for everyone' thing has been taken way too far in the last few decades. If you're going to give people Human Rights and freedom based on their merits as a human being, who decides who is worthy of rights? The rich? The powerful? The whole 'equal rights for everyone' has not been taken too far-- the whole 'equal rights for everyone' hasn't been taken far enough. There are people in Somalia, people in Sudan, in China, in North Korea, being persecuted, being slaughtered by the score, for NO reason at all. Archibald MacLeish: "There must be thousands [being needlessly persecuted]! ... Thousands == not with camels either: millions and millions of mankind burned, crushed, broken, mutilated, slaughtered, and for what? For thinking! For walking round the world in the wrong skin, the wrong-shaped noses, eyelids: sleeping in the wrong city-- London, Dresden, Hiroshima. There never could have been so many suffered more for less." In fact, I'm horrified that you could even say that the whole 'equal rights for everyone' thing has been taken way to far. Look at the holocaust, look at US internment of the Japanese, at Guantanamo bay, Tibet, North Korea, apartheid, the segregated south, look at all of these places where basic human rights are being taken away from people and tell me HOW THE HELL there is too much concern for equal rights? EDIT: added the MacLeish quote
How is Somalia or North Korea relevant to any kind of a discussion involving democracy or human rights in the Western world? Or the holocaust...
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I understand that people are annoying on the internet. I understand that a lot of people don't know what the fuck they're talking about. My problem with the OP is that you can't, nor should you, do anything about it, and merely talking about it isn't going to solve anything. Even talking about it is walking a pretty thin line between being fed up with idiots and wanting to do something about it.
Let's take teamliquid.net as a case study. TL heavily moderates posting to prevent the sort of stupid shit you're talking about, and it only works because there is such a loyal fanbase within the TL community that people accept this heavy moderation. On a different, generic website, freedom to post whatever you want to is incredibly important because, otherwise, people don't have a reason to keep coming back. TeamLiquid is different because it holds a niche (albeit growing) community of people who all have StarCraft in common. It allows TL to govern more strictly.
Think of TL as a constitutional monarchy: apart from the rules TL has given her admins, banlings, and mods, there is little stopping said powers from doing whatever the fuck they want. The only thing that keeps people coming back is loyalty to the site. The quality of posting is nice, if only because it's gratifying to see a stupid troll get insta-banned for posting trash. My point is, it's not the quality of posting that makes TL popular, it's the epic and magical prowess of StarCraft and the community therein. Not many major sites (yahoo, cnn, etc) have that kind of hold over a community, and, therefore, must allow for a greater freedom in posting.
On the internet, you have to allow trolls to be trolls, idiots to be idiots, and save the logic and reason for intelligent discussions with friends. Trying to reason on forums is like trying to reason with omegle or chatroulette: you might get an intelligent conversation, or you might have to quickly hit "next" before your boss sees a dick on your screen.
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Papua New Guinea1054 Posts
Internet went mainstream, deal with it.
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On September 10 2011 21:01 Zombie_Velociraptor wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 20:43 mbr2321 wrote:On September 10 2011 20:36 Zombie_Velociraptor wrote:According to dozens of Constitutions of many different sovereign states as well as the Geneva Convention, all human beings are born with individual human rights which cannot be infringed upon legally by any organization or state. And this is precisely why the world is filled with so many feel-entitled good-for-nothing scumbags. Not saying you're one of them or anything like that, but for all the merits of democracy, the whole 'equal rights for everyone' thing has been taken way too far in the last few decades. If you're going to give people Human Rights and freedom based on their merits as a human being, who decides who is worthy of rights? The rich? The powerful? The whole 'equal rights for everyone' has not been taken too far-- the whole 'equal rights for everyone' hasn't been taken far enough. There are people in Somalia, people in Sudan, in China, in North Korea, being persecuted, being slaughtered by the score, for NO reason at all. Archibald MacLeish: "There must be thousands [being needlessly persecuted]! ... Thousands == not with camels either: millions and millions of mankind burned, crushed, broken, mutilated, slaughtered, and for what? For thinking! For walking round the world in the wrong skin, the wrong-shaped noses, eyelids: sleeping in the wrong city-- London, Dresden, Hiroshima. There never could have been so many suffered more for less." In fact, I'm horrified that you could even say that the whole 'equal rights for everyone' thing has been taken way to far. Look at the holocaust, look at US internment of the Japanese, at Guantanamo bay, Tibet, North Korea, apartheid, the segregated south, look at all of these places where basic human rights are being taken away from people and tell me HOW THE HELL there is too much concern for equal rights? EDIT: added the MacLeish quote How is Somalia or North Korea relevant to any kind of a discussion involving democracy or human rights in the Western world? Or the holocaust...
Are you kidding me? Are you honestly asking me how Somalia and North Korea are linked with Human Rights? Do you think that North America or Europe would be any better a place to live in than Somalia or North Korea if we didn't have the right to free speech? Do you know what kind of fear it takes to stop people from talking at all? What, do you think that Kim Jong Il uses incentives to keep his people off the internet? No. He kills them-- a lot of them. And it takes that kind of genocidal maniac to deny people the Human Rights we enjoy in western society.
Basically, if we didn't have the rights we do, then the person leading us is probably using some pretty fucked-up methods to keep us quiet.
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On September 10 2011 21:12 mbr2321 wrote:
I understand that people are annoying on the internet. I understand that a lot of people don't know what the fuck they're talking about. My problem with the OP is that you can't, nor should you, do anything about it, and merely talking about it isn't going to solve anything. Even talking about it is walking a pretty thin line between being fed up with idiots and wanting to do something about it.
Let's take teamliquid.net as a case study. TL heavily moderates posting to prevent the sort of stupid shit you're talking about, and it only works because there is such a loyal fanbase within the TL community that people accept this heavy moderation. On a different, generic website, freedom to post whatever you want to is incredibly important because, otherwise, people don't have a reason to keep coming back. TeamLiquid is different because it holds a niche (albeit growing) community of people who all have StarCraft in common. It allows TL to govern more strictly.
Think of TL as a constitutional monarchy: apart from the rules TL has given her admins, banlings, and mods, there is little stopping said powers from doing whatever the fuck they want. The only thing that keeps people coming back is loyalty to the site. The quality of posting is nice, if only because it's gratifying to see a stupid troll get insta-banned for posting trash. My point is, it's not the quality of posting that makes TL popular, it's the epic and magical prowess of StarCraft and the community therein. Not many major sites (yahoo, cnn, etc) have that kind of hold over a community, and, therefore, must allow for a greater freedom in posting.
On the internet, you have to allow trolls to be trolls, idiots to be idiots, and save the logic and reason for intelligent discussions with friends. Trying to reason on forums is like trying to reason with omegle or chatroulette: you might get an intelligent conversation, or you might have to quickly hit "next" before your boss sees a dick on your screen.
Hm, can't really argue with that, even though TL.net is a pretty nice example of how things should look like. Transferring it onto a broader scale would probably be a totally different thing (as you mentioned with major sites: yahoo, cnn, etc), though.
About human rights: I am unsure whether we truly can incorporate the human rights in North Korea discourse in this discussion. I'm all for it, but I don't think it's the same thing. Again, I do not want to cut the freedom of speech for anyone.
Edit: typos.
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On September 10 2011 20:25 mbr2321 wrote:
Good God you sound so snooty in this blog post
I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and see if I can't make it look like it's intended.
Although I agree with your post, we don't have a method of directly quantifying intelligence yet and as such I feel that it's impossible to separate them. We all have rights as human beings. Also fear and panic of social degradation isn't too great, but I don't think that society has drifted into the mindlessness some people believe it to be.
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On September 10 2011 21:23 oberhofer wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2011 21:12 mbr2321 wrote:
I understand that people are annoying on the internet. I understand that a lot of people don't know what the fuck they're talking about. My problem with the OP is that you can't, nor should you, do anything about it, and merely talking about it isn't going to solve anything. Even talking about it is walking a pretty thin line between being fed up with idiots and wanting to do something about it.
Let's take teamliquid.net as a case study. TL heavily moderates posting to prevent the sort of stupid shit you're talking about, and it only works because there is such a loyal fanbase within the TL community that people accept this heavy moderation. On a different, generic website, freedom to post whatever you want to is incredibly important because, otherwise, people don't have a reason to keep coming back. TeamLiquid is different because it holds a niche (albeit growing) community of people who all have StarCraft in common. It allows TL to govern more strictly.
Think of TL as a constitutional monarchy: apart from the rules TL has given her admins, banlings, and mods, there is little stopping said powers from doing whatever the fuck they want. The only thing that keeps people coming back is loyalty to the site. The quality of posting is nice, if only because it's gratifying to see a stupid troll get insta-banned for posting trash. My point is, it's not the quality of posting that makes TL popular, it's the epic and magical prowess of StarCraft and the community therein. Not many major sites (yahoo, cnn, etc) have that kind of hold over a community, and, therefore, must allow for a greater freedom in posting.
On the internet, you have to allow trolls to be trolls, idiots to be idiots, and save the logic and reason for intelligent discussions with friends. Trying to reason on forums is like trying to reason with omegle or chatroulette: you might get an intelligent conversation, or you might have to quickly hit "next" before your boss sees a dick on your screen. Hm, can't really argue with that, even though TL.net is a pretty nice example of how things should look like. Transferring it onto a broader scale would probably be a totally different thing (as you mentioned with major sites: yahoo, cnn, etc), though. About human rights: I am unsure whether we truly can incorporate the human rights in North Korea discourse in this discussion. I'm all for it, but I don't think it's the same thing. Again, I do not want to cut the freedom of speech for anyone. Edit: typos.
I only started really talking about Human Rights after somebody posted about how they're not that big a deal, and thereafter continued to downplay their importance. So it's marginally connected to the thread, but with a clear and present danger of derailing :/
Yeah, TL is a nice change from, say, /b/
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On September 10 2011 21:23 oberhofer wrote:
About human rights: I am unsure whether we truly can incorporate the human rights in North Korea discourse in this discussion. I'm all for it, but I don't think it's the same thing. Again, I do not want to cut the freedom of speech for anyone.
Edit: typos.
Out of curiosity, who are you trying to cut freedom of speech for? And how much of it are you trying to cut? What's the breaking point here? I mean it's perfectly POSSIBLE to get your "inferior," people a permaban on the internet, but after we allow that, what happens next? Do we put them in asylums for the rest of their lives because the do illogical things? Honestly my biggest concern is that we can't base someone's "intelligence," and even then WHY do we allow these things? Surely even if it's not as educated and logically drawn, their ideas still mean a considerable amount and have a certain amount of value just because their human beings?
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On September 10 2011 21:29 IntoTheheart wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On September 10 2011 21:23 oberhofer wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
About human rights: I am unsure whether we truly can incorporate the human rights in North Korea discourse in this discussion. I'm all for it, but I don't think it's the same thing. Again, I do not want to cut the freedom of speech for anyone.
Edit: typos
. Out of curiosity, who are you trying to cut freedom of speech for? And how much of it are you trying to cut? What's the breaking point here? I mean it's perfectly POSSIBLE to get your "inferior," people a permaban on the internet, but after we allow that, what happens next? Do we put them in asylums for the rest of their lives because the do illogical things? Honestly my biggest concern is that we can't base someone's "intelligence," and even then WHY do we allow these things? Surely even if it's not as educated and logically drawn, their ideas still mean a considerable amount and have a certain amount of value just because their human beings?
I do not want to cut freedom of speech for anyone, I apologize if any of my posts suggested I was trying to do that. Also, I am not saying they are inferior human beings and their existence, be it social or physical, should be terminated.
BUT, either find a way to improve education for everyone(!), thus getting rid of the problem of defining intellect, or do something else to spread tolerance and interest in culture and whatnot. Supporting interest in things is actually the only thing that has to be done.
Not sure about your last sentence. I can agree with it, then again I partly don't.
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I've never wanted to post a 2 page length message on TL more than I do right now... but I'll refrain lol
Oberhofer I'm a little bit confused. Are you just saying that there is a lot of people with nothing to say speaking very loudly about very little online and if so they are the smaller group not us even though they get more attention? If so then I agree! but it is nothing new.
I have no clue what started the human rights debate... after re-reading everything like 5 times the only conclusion I can come up with is I disagree with both Zombie and mbr. On one side we have "Human rights = Greed and Corruption" vs some sort of humanitarian bs that sounds great but isn't reasonable to complain to us about. + Show Spoiler +mbr western human rights. that phrase has nothing to do with North Korea or China. its how OUR countries view it not theirs. We are all aware that they are treated poorly. It has nothing to do with what Zombie said afterwards. In western society Equal Rights have been taken a bit too far. it's no longer about 'equality' its about being treated 'special' because you are different.
Anyway... could have spent like 4 hours on that lol but yes OP i have arguments with people in my home all the time where they don't see the whole picture and are border line racist in their thoughts and beliefs. + Show Spoiler +I mean racist in the true meaning of the word. Kill em all - extremist type bullshit. lol I joined the armed forces and don't have as much hate for the people I was being trained to kill than these people x.x 
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Quite ironic that he's not even bothering to use proper spelling and capitalization to write this pseudo-intellectual demeaning piece of shit. Ex-nazi?
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On September 10 2011 22:27 Harrad wrote:Quite ironic that he's not even bothering to use proper spelling and capitalization to write this pseudo-intellectual demeaning piece of shit. Ex-nazi?
So you're saying unproper spelling and capitalization hints at an ex-nazi? Apart from that, I agree that presentation is part of the message, still, how is it pseudo-intellectual? Elaborate please.
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EPT
