Comments on: WarOfLife (S.WOL), October 2014 Statement (closing)

By: We, the people on Trilema - A blog by Mircea Popescu.

We, the people on Trilema - A blog by Mircea Popescu. — Tue, 07 Jan 2020 12:57:39 +0000

[...] one can very well run into a "we ? what we ?" with the best of intentions, such as for instance recently and otherwise all the damned [...]

By: chett

chett — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 14:34:50 +0000

"Don’t act like you’re above criticism, no one is perfect, not even you. And whether you respect it or not, I believe MPEx deserves criticism on more fronts than this alone. But you ain’t havin’ it, so it’s whatevs! I suspect the only man qualified to criticize you is Mircea anyway, but how does that work?"

You need a very big pumice stone to file off the rough edges.

By: Mircea Popescu

Mircea Popescu — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 13:59:49 +0000

Can you be helped ?

By: fiftystorms

fiftystorms — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 11:54:44 +0000

Well said TaT, it was certainly hard to see the value proposition here in the beginning. Well, certainly I couldn't. Fuck the waffly blowback, speak the truth. Not surprised at all, only surprised how little time it took to shut it down. Kudos to MP for that.

And the uber champ of powerplay and passive-aggressive behav. complaining about the receiving end, is amusing.

By: Mircea Popescu

Mircea Popescu — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 01:33:56 +0000

If you want a straight answer ask a straight question eh! It's the process, there are specific things I don't respect, and I don't respect 'em no matter who does 'em.

I'm not insulting and I've not been insulted. If you go to the fire department with a list of shortcuts and they show you the door - what happened there isn't that you insulted the fire department, nor that the fire department insulted you. This because you're not a sort of fire department in your own right, nor is the fire department a sort of you. What happened there is that you spoke out of line, and got called on it. If that is insulting to you then the problem is that you're misrepresenting yourself (to yourself) and the solutions abundant : either learn the lines or stop caring.

There's not a matter of "deserving to criticize". Critique is an intellectual process, it starts by laying out some assumptions, following some reasonings and delivering some conclusions. Anyone capable to do a good job with that first and second part is "deserving", whatever this may mean. (US pseudoscientific tradition has of late tended to ignore the first and pretend like the 2nd is somehow all that matters, as if reason could happen in a vaccum. This mistaken position has been oft rebuked here.)

Your approach omits both earlier stages and jumps directly to some conclusions, which happen to be unwarranted. This is the core of the powerplay, regardless how you introduce it, the smarmy "we" and the appeal to friendship don't change the nature of the attempt, merely signal the precariousness of the speakers' position. It is kind-of bizarre that you imagine it more likely I'd allow my friends do something stupid than unfriends or whatever. Really ?! Who works like that ?

I have no idea how an IPO by a guy in the WoT with an actual idea'd be unwarranted, and you do have plenty of room to speak. Use it for good rather than for stupid. It's not a matter of me being above criticism, it's a matter of me being above empty pronouncement. And that, I most definitely am, as a well proven, experimentally verified factual matter.