A limit cannot be observed directly. How could I know what limits there are unless I was told?
Dave, you presumed two different things to be the same because it was convenient to your argument. There was no logical reason to do so. How could you know? Well, for starters, there is a basic part that comes down to
thinking.
Seriously, Dave, a
moderator, and an
administrator. It's not hidden, it's right in front of you.
I am not the first, or only, member who has pointed out that you do not write for the comprehension of your audience - you write only for your own pleasure.
Since you're just recycling, at this point, I'll remind you what I said in August, Dave, which is that
I always love this particular delayed effect, which is why I am so utterly unsurprised that you would bring it back to me yet again.
Anyway, this basic difference, the practical limit of my authority, was right in front of you, as self-evident as can be, and even a detail you missed along the way¹. You spent six paragraphs and two bullet points on your own embittered make-believe, which seems an approximately apt summary of this thread and its underlying complaint.
To wit:
So which is it? Writing for self-pleasure or writing for communication?
(Rhetorical question. You won't answer; you will deflect culpability. That's OK, we know which. You've no business complaining you're not understood.)
July↗, this time; that is, I would refer you to my prior remarks from the last time you tried this one.
And, you know, since I can tell you what I'm saying and why I'm saying it, and you will
still make believe in order to complain and accuse, your rehash lecture on comprehensibility falls short. Also, your make-believe corrodes your complaint of a "Big Lie".
There is nothing new, Dave, about the idea that I can give this or that post any amount of time and thought I might, and what comes back is hasty scratch.
And that anger, that smoldering, passionate judgment might in many cases be vapid horseshit, but it also reinforces a particular point: There is an
emotional experience that comes with our interactions; that
emotional value appears to be a
more popular interest than any given subject itself. That is,
in your thread on traffic at Sciforums↗, Dave, we have occasion to consider "topics of interest"↗, and what it means to be interested in something.
Consider your fallacious juxtaposition, Dave, "Writing for self-pleasure or writing for communication". And more than simply being fallacious, it's also stupid. The prospect that a writer's satisfaction in writing is somehow utterly seperate from the communicative value of writing is absurd, even if that's how you think it works for you. But no, Dave, it's not
all for egotism; achieving actual, useful communication with you, for instance, if it needs some purpose above and beyond actually communicating usefully with you, is one of the mysteries of communication. To the other, spending such effort for the personal satisfaction of forcing the recalictrant to say something useful pursues an ephemeral pretense of reward greatly exceeded by its waste, and long outlasted by its corrosion.
And if it was just you, or even just Sciforums, then maybe it would be mere egotism for me. But this bit with people refusing communication in order to keep complaining, while hardly new², and certainly a house specialty, is not something confined exclusively to our humble bedlam. It's a real, living phenomenon with real, living implications, and would be helpful, in general, to communicate across certain gaps. And, yes, the accomplishment of a difficult and complicated task often brings people some measure of personal satsisfaction; certainly, even you're capable of figuring that part out.
Which also reminds a certain point: Nothing requires that I take you seriously, and if your record over time is a coin toss on that point, the present thread is a reminder of what taking you seriously gets anyone. If I take you at face value according to the topic post, there is a lot to talk about. As the history since has shown, that's not really what you're on about. Even this thread comes back to the question of what it means to be interested in a subject,
i.e., whether you are
complaining toward a solution↗ or
just to complain↑. And,
again↑,
in your consideration of traffic at Sciforums↗, perhaps we might reflect on what it means to be interested in something. Do you understand what that means, Dave? People who are interested in science, and especially physics, might find the
heavy ion experiment↗ interesting
news, but, as I
suggested↑ earlier, it's not necessarily the sort of
discussion that interests them.
Or, per
#190↑,
the occasion provides a particular illustrative example. And you understand what that means, right:
The reaction to KX's fanciful inquiry is an illustrative example showing the nature of people's interest in a subject.
And lots of stuff has illustrative value, like the
cromulence of speculative childsplay↑. What you
pointed to↗ isn't particularly objectionable, or anything like that, but do consider the cromulence of two critics discussing their rules for the gods they invent for the purpose of criticizing God. At its most ridiculous, such behavior can turn a debate between atheists and Christians into a dispute between religious zealots. As one who has made a certain point about literary criticism³ for a while, now, it looks like you're trying to
rediscover something that ought not be so obscure. You're more direct than I would be, "has not attempted to state that objectively God exists". But also consider the condition, "or that his beliefs are right and mine are wrong", alongside your description of "a perfectly fine philosophical discussion" that is nothing more than speculative criticism.
And if we want to, sure, we can try to make a point about how speculation is a common aspect of both your cromulence and KX's fancy, but it is both less effort and more important to consider that the discussion 'twixt Daves has certain value as an illustrative example showing the nature of people's interest in a subject.
Or, per #190: This is why, and perhaps we might reflect on what it means to be interested in something, which leads to a question about how
reasonable standards↑ of anything might disrupt that interest.
____________________
Notes:
¹ I understand, that you missed the detail, but, for the record, you did participate in a certain 2022 thread in which Tiassa and James R discussed this point, including Tiassa's explicit
clarification↗: "James, you can stop me if you choose to. I cannot stop you even if circumstance were to suggest I must."
Also worth observing is that six years ago, even
Cluelusshusband↗ could explain a basic sketch, Dave: "Keep in mind that Tiassa answrs to James R."
² It's a question that just doesn't stop asking: "How do you engage with someone who doesn't just not care,"
K. T. Nelson↱ asked in 2017, "but wants you to get upset—someone for whom 'this makes people upset' is actually the whole reason to have that stance in the first place?" At Sciforums, it's an important question to keep at hand, and while it is generally a question of political discourse—
e.g., or, at least, ostensibly,
gun control (2018)↗,
Mueller investigation (2019)↗, Trump supporters (2019; also the subject of Nelson's 2017 question)↗[/url],
compromise and Appeasement (2020)↗,
the spectre of civil war (2022)↗,
liberalism and conservatism (2022; incl. reflection ca. 2004)↗, and
Twitter (2022)↗
—the range of what passes for political discourse is much broader than the most direct applications. How to communicate with people who refuse communication? It's a very similar question, and has to do with discursive function more than any particular politics.
³
See also,
2017↗, and
again↗,
2018↗,
2019↗,
2020↗,
2021↗ with an
applied example↗ in the same thread; and an example from
2023↗ that ... oh.