rpenner said:
In post #41, after two pages of other people exhorting t-c to take action, I was taking issue with James R's description of t-c as "reticent to contact outsiders." We are exactly that. And while we may be powerless to intervene, we also have 2000+ posts of t-c to base factual claims that he "never takes our advice" and we don't know his RL situation. That's not "personal issues" -- that's the public history of t-c as an individual with this entire community
It is also irrelevant to the report put before us.
It is also your choice to make those aspects relevant to your own consideration.
Just what exactly is that supposed to be "suggestive" of? That I have paid attention to t-c as an individual? That a day after (or thereabouts, I don't have detailed timestamps on these posts) I still don't see t-c taking any advice? All we can give t-c is facts, advice and attention. He denied the first and didn't accept the second and the third is a poor substitute for positive RL interactions.
It is suggestive of falsehood about your excuse provided in #75 above.
Furthermore, your list of question marks omits an important one: "Behaving as many abuse survivors do?"
I don't know if t-c ever had positive associations with any member on this forum or specifically those in the first two pages of the post, but by page #16 he's already morphed his claim from being beaten up to wanting to know the "science" behind such repeatable phenomena.
Understanding the psychopathology of domestic violence does at some point tread into the more physical science of neurology. At some point, human biology meets chemistry, and chemistry meets physics. When the ultimate phenomenon driving the human mind is a matter of electrochemistry, natural sciences will eventually underpin the social sciences; presently, it is a matter of observational, data recording, and assessment capacities within the fields of study. We network large numbers of computers now to help accomplish difficult scientific tasks like decoding the human genome and finding otherwise obscure objects in the cosmos. Wait until we are ready to build a similar network to study the brain.
Frankly, I don't understand how wanting to know the science behind domestic abuse is problematic.
If t-c is rationalizing actual abuse then this is already deep denial that he has a problem which needs to be called out if t-c is to be assisted.
The problem with calling someone out on this point is a matter of
how we address the problem we perceive. People who want to call others out are generally missing the point.
Then in post #55 he switches gears again and repeats James R's "one off" from post #40 indicating that he is not habitually abused. Is that true or is he merely latching on to James R's phrasing?
Could be true, could be an echo. This is an example of why this issue is so difficult to deal with.
Which, in turn, brings to mind a more general consideration; for an allegedly scientific community, our discourse at Sciforums tends toward dysfunctionally simplistic outlooks on human behavior and diversity.
To wit, sure, there are red flags about the testament. But I can also see, simultaneously, other pathways by which those concerns would be irrelevant. And that's the thing:
If you look closely enough, there are almost always red flags.
But here's the other thing:
It doesn't matter.
This is a matter of human dignity and general, civilized decency. To the other, I can see how some in this community might reject some things until they are mathematically demonstrated. And if I want to be really cynical, I can probably come up with a quick line about the value of science for boner pills.
Thus, as I noted in
#66↑:
If our neighbor is cynically politicking, that will become evident in its own time.
It is absolutely true that t-c's history of posts has conditioned me to suspect him of being tenuously connected with reality, but I have always operated under the assumption that post #1 was a legitimate report.
The first half of that is such that I would simply remind that it doesn't matter. The second part, however, I sincerely doubt.
This willingness to believe post #1 leads me to doubt posts #16, #55 and #60.
The problem with that doubt would be that it is your own priorities.
My own red flags were a combination of posts #1, 4 and 16, specifically the dearth of information combined with the question about why women do this. But that alarm derives from
my own focus; I'm always suspect of that kind of potential indictment against women, since it is so commonplace in my society.
However, my own focus is
my own problem. And it should be easy enough to set that aside; such reports as we have are just that important.
True, not doubting the report is an oft-unwieldy notion, but the main problem there is a quasi-manichaean dualism: If a detail is off, then the report must be entirely false. That's too easy. It's
lazy. And
greedy. And
cruel.
The way it works, then, is to run with the idea that
something happened. And if that something turns out to be, "The alleged victim made it up out of thin air," so be it. But if the victim says Yog-Sothoth attacked him in the kitchen for overcooking the mac and cheese so that the pasta was too soft, what do we do with that? Do we say, "Well, there's no such thing as Yog-Sothoth, so that means nobody ever laid a hand on him"?
That
would be the easy route.
The challenge is to figure out what Yog-Sothoth represents. That is, the point is to understand
what really happened.
And that's the best way we have so far to deal with these issues.
Meanwhile, having set aside my own focus in order to look at the report before me, I admit I don't see how your complaint about posts #16, 55, and 60 actually works; that is to say, our reporting neighbor's behavior does not strike me as unusual in this aspect.
What you call "attacking" in reference to post #61 is merely recognition that t-c makes terrible claims in a large percentage of his 2000+ posts.
Which, in turn, is irrelevant to the report before us.
No one knows enough about t-c on this forum to be his friend, to know his particulars, to engage him in conversation.
Again, irrelevant to the report before us.
Unlike the hotline numbers he was given and refused to try, we have no means of conditioning conversations on his engagement with reality and our side of the dialog.
The first part sounds typical of abuse survivors; the second is a matter of other people's priorities. To wit:
Why participate in the discussion?
We have no sense of how drunk/impaired he was when he posts his posts, in part that he doesn't normally conform to standard conversation style in his posts nor do we know how long he spends writing each.
And this is relevant to the report ... how?
I use harsh language about his posts in total, because I'm trying to teach him a lesson about supporting one viewpoint with evidence and reasoned argument -- a lesson I've tried to teach many times in science discussions -- and one that will ultimately be important if he tried to share his narrative over the phone.
But this isn't about you. It isn't about me. It's about this person who put this report in front of us.
I'm not trying to cajole a drunken abuse victim in extremis, I'm trying to provoke a serial denier into engagement with his embrace of untruths.
And that is
your own focus, which in turn is
your own problem.
The metaphor of physical violence seems inappropriate for this thread.
True enough. Indeed, you'll note that I stayed out of this thread until page four. I probably would have entered sooner, but that's the thing. Between the alarms I noted about a few posts and the fact that the most part of page one was people giving what advice they could under the circumstances, I didn't need to get involved in this one. The descent into idiotic hostility is what compelled my involvement. It is also true that I will be harsh about this because
we do not treat our fellow human beings that way. And in the spirit of your note about violence, I would point out that I'm using black ink instead of green because I already know that authority simply cannot crack skulls hard enough to force people to understand.
What happened in this thread is disgusting.
I don't have any hotline training at all -- I don't think it's required to post at this forum.
In truth, I'm uncertain how your fallacy helps.
But I do know history and assumptions color everything we hear other people say. I will not pretend to be t-c's friend, but I don't need to be t-c's friend to believe his post #1 and exhort him to action and castigate him for inaction, denial and shoddy rationalization.
And that is your own focus. It is your own priority. It is your own problem.
What t-c thinks of my posts we do not know because he never responded as if I was on ignore and then was banned.
It's hard to know how people expected him to respond to the spectacle that started at the end of page one.
And the thing is that for all that other stuff you mention, it's not like the staff isn't aware of him. I'm pretty sure I've seen suggestions floated for
who he actually is, at least in terms of site history. And if those aspects turned out to be true, and if this turned out to be a halfassed attempt at trolling the forum for revenge, it still doesn't matter.
This is the report we have before us. Everything else is a matter of our own priorities.