At 12:02 PM 6/24/00 -0700, you wrote:
>Anders Sandberg wrote:
>
>> The best defense against this is to make sure the mainstream of the
>> discussion is held in a polite and understandable manner, to create
>> clear principles that can help people understand that the extremist is
>> just that, and overall try to gain a good reputation.
>
>Anders, *you have* a good reputation, and I am honored to be
>associated with you. I dont recall ever seeing an unkind word from
>you or even a micoflame, even against those who richly deserve
>it. {8-] However there are posters to this list that I hope I am
>never associated with, (and they surely feel likewise about me)
>and I have no control over what they post.
>
>There are many cases where we quote a previous post then
>refute that stated viewpoint. Any debate opponent doing a
>keyword search would get hits with someone else's quote with
>our name on it. If they wanted, they could delete out our
>comment and quote someone elses words under our name.
I think Anders has crystallized the direction of behavior is an aptly
positive light, but it's often easier to write down the words than to deal
head on with an adverse poster. If Anders had to defend his reputation,
how would he do it? For example, if Anders was told something very
unbecoming about himself or his family, I don't even want to imagine, but
something that could humiliate or hurt him professionally, would he
continue politely to respond when the flamer wouldn't let up. Or, would he
walk away knowing that he did the best he could under the circumstances,
and better judgment told him to ignore the flamer. I would never want
Anders to experience such a thing, but it does build character -:)
I suppose it depends on how curt the flames are, how public the forum is,
and how other people in the forum are dealing with it.
>I dont know how to deal with deniability of archived posts
>other than to request a complete version of any quoted post
>and a request to confirm my authorship. spike
This is great idea for self-protection. But how many times do we write
something and don't think to save it, or have no idea how it might be used?
Hopefully not too often.
I think that Bonnie touched on important issues also:
"What are the bad things that could happen if the Extropians didn't have a
good reputation? With whom must they try to maintain a good reputation?"
Last night I was at a life extension summit and we were talking about all
the recent PR in the news about biotech, nano and cryonics, etc. Someone,
maybe me since I have a thang for culture, will write about the people
behind the ideas. Robert Freitas (_NanoMedicine_) is a really cryo guy, as
is Michael West (formerly with Geron) and others on this list, etc. The
point being, there are so many interesting people in "our" culture and it
is becoming more and more mainstream. Since our ideas are disturbing to
many people, it's best to present them in ways that are not threatening.
Thus, a good reputation is beneficial. Maintaining a good reputation with
each other (first), and then with the public would mean those who are our
colleagues, those who we do business with us, and those who interview us in
the media.
Natasha
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