When did the C+S designation become worthless?

S

Sciborg_S_Patel

Thought the Consciousness & Science forum was meant to have different discussions than Critical Debate, but increasingly it seems this has been abandoned.

Personally I don't get why this isn't being enforced - it doesn't seem incredibly difficult to make a separate thread and have a single post being linked to it. IIRC Andy allowed this small interruption in C+S threads because it kept the purposes of both forums intact.
 
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To be clear I'm not attacking the mods here, maybe there was some reasoning on this but I just don't get it.
 
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I think that it is a forum-wide issue.

Ever since the fences went down at EC&S and resident skeptics were allowed to post there, and even get into a few arguments, I pretty much assumed that everything else was fair game.

I think that at least for that section, the rules should be enforced. Not everybody cares about the back and forth and it used to be an oasis.
 
Agreed on Spirituality being compromised - it's very unfortunate.

The way Andy had it was CS was used to talk about science that on the whole accepted consciousness as fundamental and/or that parapsychology at the very least had offered evidence of something.

CD was for the kind of arguments that now fill all the forums.
 
Sci, what belief do you hold that allows you to post everywhere, and also qualifies you to criticise others that do the same?
 
Sci, what belief do you hold that allows you to post everywhere, and also qualifies you to criticise others that do the same?

Actually IIRC Andy deleted conversations I was in when they went against the intentions of the specific forums?

So really everyone would have to respect the intended rules, I wouldn't be exempt.
 
Sci, what belief do you hold that allows you to post everywhere, and also qualifies you to criticise others that do the same?

As I remember the original purpose of those specific forums, it was to allow people free discussion of things of a spiritual nature without having to drag the conversation back to the question of whether the spiritual exists at all. For many of us here, we have had that conversation with ourselves long ago and sometimes want to leave the scepticism behind for a while and take it to the next level. That means discussing, for example, the nature of the afterlife or the purpose of the life review or how consciousness might transition death. How and why but not if. If is for the open discussions.

I mean, do you really want to take part in those discussions? And if so, how long would it be before you just had to point out that there really is no such thing as the spiritual?
 
As I remember the original purpose of those specific forums, it was to allow people free discussion of things of a spiritual nature without having to drag the conversation back to the question of whether the spiritual exists at all. For many of us here, we have had that conversation with ourselves long ago and sometimes want to leave the scepticism behind for a while and take it to the next level. That means discussing, for example, the nature of the afterlife or the purpose of the life review or how consciousness might transition death. How and why but not if. If is for the open discussions.

I mean, do you really want to take part in those discussions? And if so, how long would it be before you just had to point out that there really is no such thing as the spiritual?

I tend to steer clear of EC & S.

IMO the show threads are more vibrant when the widest range of opinions are represented.
 
To be clear I'm not attacking the mods here, maybe there was some reasoning on this but I just don't get it.
Well I guess I am responsible for reducing the emphasis on this. After the departure of a certain person, there seemed less need to enforce that rule. I mean I don't see why someone can't make a sceptical point so long as they don't try to hog the discussion, or make stupid, trivial, or repetitive comments. sometimes we all make sceptical comments about particular subjects.

Suppose Malf or Steve001 wanted to report a precognitive dream - where would he post it :)

I find it easier to judge comments on their merits.

However, the distinction still exists, and can be reimposed if necessary.

David
 
I still think that EC&S should be closed to them. SD's "Meaning of life" thread was allowed to linger there for some time, despite his posture becoming increasingly obvious, before being moved to CDs. I highly doubt that he really intended that to be a friendly exchange of ideas. After the forum crash, a topic that was originally at CDs was accidentally recreated in EC&S, with Arouet and some proponents being involved in the usual banter. To his credit, he did leave after I noted that the thread should be at CDs, but it remained there for some time with all of the confrontation stinking up the place.

David, I know that you moved several threads started by one of the dual personality troll's accounts when his bias became obvious, but I get a feeling that the boundaries have been too lax. I mean, in this very moment there is a thread by one "TikiB", that is most likely the same troll, at EC&S. This guy was caught jumping accounts and playing dumb about it, he has been trolling both this forum and Bernardo's, he outright lied to you when he claimed that he was "Russian"... More than enough reasons have been given to justify that these accounts get banned on sight.
 
David, I know that you moved several threads started by one of the dual personality troll's accounts when his bias became obvious,
I have never moved (as opposed to removed) a thread yet. I err on the side of caution because I am manipulating the live forum and I don't have a manual! Andy and Alex make the odd change, so it must have been them.

I guess the substantial question is, do we want to have a corner of the forum where people can behave badly? The idiots soon get eliminated - though I would love to have an option to ban someone and delete all their posts - at the moment that only happens automatically if I press the spam button - which doesn't always describe the problem.

David
 
I have never moved (as opposed to removed) a thread yet. I err on the side of caution because I am manipulating the live forum and I don't have a manual! Andy and Alex make the odd change, so it must have been them.

I guess the substantial question is, do we want to have a corner of the forum where people can behave badly? The idiots soon get eliminated - though I would love to have an option to ban someone and delete all their posts - at the moment that only happens automatically if I press the spam button - which doesn't always describe the problem.

David

We don't need a section where people behave badly.

Personally I think it needs to be clear what the different forums are for and maintain that. I didn't always agree with all of Andy's decisions re:modding, but I did respect him and I think this particular enforcement was valuable.

The reality is 99% of the posters aren't going to have massive shifts toward or away from materialism/Psi/afterlife/etc because of someone else's forum posts. (Not like it matters.)

Instead, since the likelihood of our conversations having some major impact even within the regular readership of this forum (which is only approx 100 or less people AFAICTell) is minimal to zero, we should divide the forums so people can have a variety of conversations beyond that which takes place in CD.
 
I seem to remember someone (Steve001? apologies if not) said that his/her posts were aimed at the lurkers and not for the sake of debate. Personally, I think that kind of naked points scoring - the frequent one-liner statements with no attempt at justification or the constant stream of click-bait instead of debate - should be moderated. We all post links to support the points we make but they are generally not the hit-and-run variety.

On the whole, I think this forum is fairly tolerant and, when things get heated, people can discuss personal differences by PM. I can't say this for certain but I don't imagine there are many materialist oriented forums which have - over the lifetime of the forum - had several opponents of materialism being among the most prolific posters.
 
Actually, though there is a genuine issue here, I don't think it has ever been clearly understood. In the early days of this forum there was a lot of whining from certain members about being treated as outcasts, and in effect complaining of being considered second-class citizens.

On the old forums (a few years ago) there was a zone called 'the haven', which seemed to work rather better. Maybe it was simply more strictly moderated, but it seemed to exist, and have its own conversations quite happily without apparent dissent. (Or maybe I missed the dissent, I'm a relative newcomer myself).

I suppose that when this new forum was set up, in effect it was considered that all of it was like the old haven, and then a special area was set up to allow more broad discussions. Perhaps simply that restructuring didn't quite serve the same purpose. In a lot of ways it was working ok, but I've found that private conversations are perhaps serving the purpose which the old haven did, which in a way is ok, but sometimes I think it's a shame that discussions are driven underground like that, it's a kind of failure somewhere - though I don't place the responsibility for this on anyone in particular, it's more to do with the physical structure or layout perhaps.
 
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