Apology

[bot-mod]

Sure thing I love a chat, best thing about this place 🫡

[LetTheRedeemed]

@NotShanalotte Cool
blessings

[yerrag]

@LetTheRedeemed

Thanks for the segue.

@Amazoniac and @ThinPicking are two people I wish I could reply to more often but often don't bother to as I spend too much time decrypting their comments.

With A, I think it has more to do with his Dutch (or maybe Indonesian, or both) affecting his English, and that I accept.

With T, I just wonder why. Are you Brit and have a dialect like Cockney or Welsh? I speak US English and most of the time, your meaning is lost on me.

[LetTheRedeemed]

@yerrag hah right? I think some of ThinPicking-y-speak is his humor lol

[brad]

@ThinPicking lol

[Norwegian Mugabe]

Thanks for sticking up for free speech. I was afraid we were ending up with another Charlie forum TBH.

[Kvirion]

@Norwegian-Mugabe said in Apology:

Thanks for sticking up for free speech.

Yep, moreover... It's good to remember that we need a basic set of rules and proper initial conditions to keep things free.

As Ray would say a system needs energy and structure.

A system without any rules is just chaos... I have written more about it here https://bioenergetic.forum/post/23589

[Peatful]

@Kvirion said in Apology:

@Norwegian-Mugabe said in Apology:

Thanks for sticking up for free speech.

Yep, moreover... It's good to remember that we need a basic set of rules and proper initial conditions to keep things free.

As Ray would say a system needs energy and structure.

A system without any rules is just chaos... I have written more about it here https://bioenergetic.forum/post/23589

You heard this thought:
Without vision or leadership; people perish.
(Grossly paraphrased on my behalf)

Structure is paramount
And
What rules the structure is the way the organism/organization will trend

Ie: our ruling metabolism.

Or relevant here- Charlie’s pathology.
Or the illness of any gatekeeper.
The energy.

Whomever creates or enforces these guardrails-
Needs to be well.

[Kvirion]

@Peatful said in Apology:

You heard this thought:
Without vision or leadership; people perish.
(Grossly paraphrased on my behalf)

Yeah, agree. I would reformulate it slightly:
Without a proper sense of direction or (distributed) leadership; people perish.

A sense of direction allows for constant course correction and distributed leadership minimizes the chance of tyrants...

Structure is paramount
And
What rules the structure is the way the organism/organization will trend

Yep.

Or relevant here- Charlie’s pathology.
Or the illness of any gatekeeper.
The energy.

Whomever creates or enforces these guardrails-
Needs to be well.

It's good to have a system of proper Checks and Balances... to prevent unfortunate events like RPF anti-VA takeover...

[Insr]

I like free speech.

[AR04]

Who was this?

[T-3]

@brad The clearly defined and minimalist structure you've created for the forum (only two rules) and, within that structure, giving meaningful expression to free speech (e.g., Lol-ing rather than banning "f&!k you"...) are much appreciated. Long may it continue.

[T-3]

@LetTheRedeemed I appreciate your posts and hope the most interesting forum members keep posting energetically and substantively. I take seriously your concern that offensive or politically incorrect content posted on this forum may cause forum members we would like to continue contributing to leave. That is a serious tradeoff to consider when advocating, like I am, in support of brad's minimalist structure with only two rules (allowing offensive posts to continue).

I think my preferences match yours to a large degree--about which forum members' posts to read and wishing to see a greater proportion of informative rather than shit-posts/fighting . But no matter how well-intentioned, adding more rules/restrictions would, in my view, risk a lot more than is lost because of the minimalist two-rule structure at present. See RPF. There is surely a place for virtuous anger, polemics, speculation, challenging Ray's ideas, or finding new links/understandings/context (possibly offensive to some) related to Ray's ideas.

The current structure is good in my view. More rules aren't needed. The structure we're looking for will be ours to create voluntarily. Coercion not needed. .

[T-3]

@Kvirion I read your post on the other thread you linked to, where you argued that more "structure" in the form of new rules and stricter forum moderation would be needed to avoid this forum becoming "chaotic". You wrote: "a system (like a forum) without constraints and attractors will always be in permanent high chaos."

I am sympathetic to this theory. But I think you're overstating things, drawing a false dichotomy (chaos versus whatever makes a meaningful/interesting Ray-Peat/bioenergetic forum), and missing the most valuable sources of structure that the forum already has (and/or has the potential of). In the mathematical theories of dynamical systems with emergent structure (which I think you're obliquely referring to), there are some exogenous structural features that modelers impose from on high (analogous to forum rules set by a forum admin/founder). Most of the interesting action in those models, however, is "emergent", based on the choices that agents in those models make (akin to how we forum members decide to allocate attention, what to respond to and, most importantly, what to post).

It's of course your choice to avoid this forum if the content (jointly caused by forum rules and the emergent structure created voluntarily by members and their interaction) doesn't adhere to the prescriptive principles you called for. I hope you stay! In the spirit of respectful debate, I wanted to note that, although my preferences over the style of forum content matches yours substantively, I would strongly argue against imposing rules to bring about the desired forum content (which we share, but disagree about procedurally). Hoping those of you forum members calling on brad for more rules/regulation will see what that risks and why the minimalist two-rule forum structure is more than enough for forum members to go forth and generate meaningful and abundant future forum structure with the content of our posts.

Let's be productive anti-entropic agents without asking the admin for the curtailment of speech you're asking for here:
"
Therefore, It would be good to conceive some enabling constraints (guidelines) and emphasize that the main attractor is an educational exchange about bioenergetics as a medicine and philosophy...
That can be done with the help of pinned posts, FAQs, and proper moderation.
Examples of enabling constraints:
Forum entries should be
substantive and respectful
with minimal or no personal name-calling
without informal fallacies like a straw man, etc...
"

[bot-mod]

@noodlecat59, a sane separatist. I hope they return.

[Hearthfire]

I agree the forum should lean more towards free speech absolutism as Brad is doing, but there's very obviously a lot of shitposting going on. How do you deal with that? Drown it out with higher quality posts I guess? I don't know, it's a very hard line to straddle if you want to keep free speech absolutism and not turn into a Charlie.

I did find that moderator making power moves very strange, even though I hate some of the shitposters around here.

Why is it that moderator positions always seems to get filled by people that abuse and over use their mod power? I guess the position is just attractive to people who want to do that.
Which is why I think those positions should be more vetted and given to people who DON'T want them.

[bot-mod]

@Hearthfire said in Apology:

there's very obviously a lot of shitposting going on

Not that much.

@Hearthfire said in Apology:

How do you deal with that?

Fuck with them, constructively. Or whatever you would do in real life.

@Hearthfire said in Apology:

Why is it that moderator positions always seems to get filled by people that abuse and over use their mod power? I guess the position is just attractive to people who want to do that.
Which is why I think those positions should be more vetted and given to people who DON'T want them.

I wouldn't describe NShan's actions as "abuse" but still understand and agree in the question. Here now there's something resembling a perfect arrangement. "Moderators" can be "moderated" from above, below or beside.

I could go crazy right now. You'd all throw shit at me and brad would cut my head off.

Fundamentally I'm here to talk. The only thing I'm prone to "moderate" is bot/GPT activity.

[Kvirion]

@T-3 said in Apology:

In the mathematical theories of dynamical systems with emergent structure (which I think you're obliquely referring to)

No, those "mathematical theories of dynamical systems" apply only to the particles on a physics level.
I'm writing about biological Complex Adaptive (eco)Systems instead. Moreover, the anthropological complexity of humans adds another level/layer of complexity to it - and it cannot be modeled or predicted. (We are more than ants...). See No Laws Entail Evolution or Computational Irreducibility.

But let's get to the point. Chaotic systems usually don't like to stay this way, after some time of interactions, some constraints emerge. But such constraints are usually suboptimal and temporary - they evolve! (systems are far from equilibrium) Some of such systems survive most collapses.

But enough theory, let's get practical.
If we allow an ecosystem (like this forum) to be almost totally free, then some "wild" spontaneous constraints will emerge with time but in most cases, they will be suboptimal. i.e., promote local optima like the most brutal or outspoken/heated, but not the most in-depth discussions. Or they can create cliques or "movements" like anit-VA RPF. This will discourage more calm/peaceful/gentle/thoughtful users from participating (as many others warned).
Therefore, it would be much better to consciously and thoughtfully create enabling constraints that will support wise discussion in the spirit of Ray Peat before the wild constraints emerge spontaneously...
And by constraints, I don't mean the bars of the cage, but the scaffolding that helps the grapes grow...

So, the choice is easy, we can have a free forum, which in time will become free from in-depth discussion, or a forum that will proactively encourage and nurture honest wisdom exchange.

And we have a lot of practical examples of such.
A free (unregulated) market of food became a market of most cheap and toxic i.e. PUFAs, pesticide-loaded fast food...
A free market of Internet ideas became mainly a tribal conflict of superficial ideas and marketing deceptive click-bait articles...
A free market of research papers journal points promotes the most politically correct articles, not the most insightful/innovative.

As we all remember Ray was non-violent, joyful, wise, and generous in his discussions. Let's keep it this way.

Free doesn't mean free from effort. True liberty requires a lot of conscious work...

[LetTheRedeemed]

@Kvirion based comment… took the words right outta my mouth

[bot-mod]

"True liberty requires a lot of conscious work." - Kvirion

Thank you.

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