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Living Room / Re: Outing the Internet's worst troll.
« Last post by 40hz on October 18, 2012, 04:08 PM »^Apples and oranges. If you work long and hard enough, anything can be made to look "almost" like anything else.
And in this case it's really a stretch to compare the the situation surrounding Violentacrez to what was done to Remus Shepard. And, with all due sympathy and respect for his pain and personal tragedy, Remus Shepard paints with a pretty broad brush. He also ignores (or dismisses) how putting unacceptable behaviors out in the clear light of day are effective in putting a stop to them. Unless, of course, you'd like to make a case that blowing the whistle and naming names of people involved in something like the torture and prisoner abuse that took place in the Abu Ghraib was unfair to the US service personnel tried and convicted for such crimes. (Note that these practices had been previously reported to authorities through official channels with no result. It wasn't until it got "outed" before the entire world that action was finally taken.)
Then there's the fact that several million people were murdered in openly secret extermination camps a little over half a century ago. It wasn't until long after it was too late that the world saw and was sickened at what went on. One ponders what might have happened if the intelligence gathered by various sources about the conditions in the Nazi death camps had been made public, and not simply dismissed by those who received it as "impossible to be happening."
Of course there are revisionists who continue to insist none of that ever happened. And there will always be those that will believe them.
Many times those in authority, for various reasons, turn a blind eye towards problems they don't know how (or simply prefer not) to deal with. In the case of Reddit, Violentacrez fell into that category.
Still, Reddit will have its "levelers" and revisionists (and those who appeal to what they consider "higher principles") who will claim this individual is now being misjudged and treated unfairly for his own self-elected behaviors. Behaviors which this same individual frankly and unrepentantly states were done purely with the intent to provoke outrage and dismay.
Marvin Minski once remarked that there was an unfortunate tendency on the part of many to focus far too much on similarities rather than differences. Minski said that, on a certain level, anything could be considered to be the equivalent of everything else. He went on to say that doing so led to "brain rot."
He suggested that we were far better off focusing on dissimilarities in order to zero in on those "differences that made a difference." That, he felt was key to all human inquiry and progress.
I agree.
And in this case it's really a stretch to compare the the situation surrounding Violentacrez to what was done to Remus Shepard. And, with all due sympathy and respect for his pain and personal tragedy, Remus Shepard paints with a pretty broad brush. He also ignores (or dismisses) how putting unacceptable behaviors out in the clear light of day are effective in putting a stop to them. Unless, of course, you'd like to make a case that blowing the whistle and naming names of people involved in something like the torture and prisoner abuse that took place in the Abu Ghraib was unfair to the US service personnel tried and convicted for such crimes. (Note that these practices had been previously reported to authorities through official channels with no result. It wasn't until it got "outed" before the entire world that action was finally taken.)
Then there's the fact that several million people were murdered in openly secret extermination camps a little over half a century ago. It wasn't until long after it was too late that the world saw and was sickened at what went on. One ponders what might have happened if the intelligence gathered by various sources about the conditions in the Nazi death camps had been made public, and not simply dismissed by those who received it as "impossible to be happening."
Of course there are revisionists who continue to insist none of that ever happened. And there will always be those that will believe them.
Many times those in authority, for various reasons, turn a blind eye towards problems they don't know how (or simply prefer not) to deal with. In the case of Reddit, Violentacrez fell into that category.
Still, Reddit will have its "levelers" and revisionists (and those who appeal to what they consider "higher principles") who will claim this individual is now being misjudged and treated unfairly for his own self-elected behaviors. Behaviors which this same individual frankly and unrepentantly states were done purely with the intent to provoke outrage and dismay.
Marvin Minski once remarked that there was an unfortunate tendency on the part of many to focus far too much on similarities rather than differences. Minski said that, on a certain level, anything could be considered to be the equivalent of everything else. He went on to say that doing so led to "brain rot."
He suggested that we were far better off focusing on dissimilarities in order to zero in on those "differences that made a difference." That, he felt was key to all human inquiry and progress.
I agree.
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