Welcome to the forum Margart! Please post an intro if you haven't.
NonZeroSum wrote: ↑Wed Nov 15, 2017 1:36 am
Sorted, sorry about that, we've already had our first troll attack so security is high. Feel free to make an introduction post or write some details about your interest in the wiki project in your profile page on the wiki.
I changed some permissions around.
I made a new group called 'intermediateUser', which trustedUsers can add people to. IntermediateUsers can edit pages but not add other people. And they can be blocked by trustedUsers. This will prevent any propagation of spamming or vandalism.
Margaret is obviously not vandalizing and has already made some good contributions and edits, but I would say we don't know her well enough yet to know she wouldn't add others who might not be as considerate.
We definitely need to establish some editing guidelines, though.
Any substantial edits of what others have contributed -- particularly those involving disagreement -- should be discussed on the forum first, it's very difficult to have a back and forth on the Wiki and keep track of things.
Comments like these are ideally made on the forum, not in-line:
Margaret Hayek wrote:In response, those who wish to share an alternative perspective might worry about the extent to which they ipso facto get labeled as 'apologists' and are accused of 'attacking' those who have a different view. They also might not understand why there is such worry about a cult and hijacking of vegan youtube by someone who has only 13,000 followers.
We care because Vegan Gains has a huge following, and has promoted this through debates to an even larger audience.
The issues of intellectual dishonesty and apologia for or opposition to action against pseudoscience and pseudophilosophy are substantive and probably warrant their own articles.
Margaret Hayek wrote:Those who hold the view that concerns about NTT's deleterious effects are exaggerated might be very glad that information is being shared about its logical shortcomings and that the text of arguments without those shortcomings is in the process of being linked to these discussions. But they might attempt to clarify that, if critics are so concerned about NTT being popularized on Youtube at the expense of better arguments for the same purpose, it would be nice if these critics would undertake some popularization of these better arguments, perhaps on Youtube. They might agree that it would be naive to think that the sheer superior rational force of better arguments would cause them to spread - but that this is all the more reason for those who find it dangerous that NTT is being used in the place of them to do more to actively spread the better arguments, beyond begin the task of explaining why they are better on this wiki. This is sincere - it seems for instance that in an early debate Vegan Gains took the wording of NTT from Isaac in the comments section, not only because he's a long-time supporter of Isaac, but because he really was looking for a short convincing ethical argument that gets the rational force across quickly and efficiently. It at the very least had the practical drawback of the second premise being pretty difficult for many people to comprehend on the fly. If there was something better to offer (and proponents of this view would be inclined to agree that there is) it really would be good to make it available to people for such contexts.
This was already addressed in editing in the article, although she might have missed it. Thus why the forum thread is more suitable for these discussions.
"Better" from an objective standpoint is not necessarily the same as what will be perceived by biased and uncritical activists as better. Ineffective and counter-productive activism based on the flaws of human psychology is predominant (look at how many activists use accusatory and alienating approaches). NTT leverages many biases to gain unfair advantage in the activist's mind against objectively better arguments (such as laziness, because the best arguments are empirical, and science is HARD).
We can work out how to clarify this in the wiki, but we should discuss it here first if possible.
It may even warrant an entire article, because this criticism is likely to be repeated.
As to the focus on NTT right now, it is topical and we can't afford substantial distraction while people are interested in this.
But if you're up for adding to this, please do:
http://philosophicalvegan.com/wiki/index.php/Arguments_for_veganism
I'm going to remove those comments form the wiki since we can discuss them here (ideally in a new thread)
Edit: I guess I can't do that yet, because it's hard to tell what has been edited.
