Re: A critique of the BBC aquatic ape programme and the transcript.


JAE wrote:
> Algis Kuliukas wrote:

> > No, Jason. I'm ending the conversation because I can see no point in
> > discussing things with people who are intent on intrepeting fair
> > criticisms as a "viscious dehumanizing slights", when they are the ones
> > who've been doing most of the attacking. I'm sick of trying to
> > communicate with people who are determined to interpet portrayals of
> > their views as "lies" when they're the ones doing most of the
> > misrepresentating.
>
> See below. You have been doing attacking as well.

Yes, I have. So why is it Ok for you to blow your cool and call someone
what you did, but not for me to do so?

> My comment was to
> suggest that you are false in any presentation that puts you as the one
> who takes the high ground. My comment was meant to remind you that
> you've made some nasty attacks, attacks that you appear here not to be
> sorry about but are trying instead to explain that they weren't
> actually attacks. I don't believe it and I don't buy it and I don't
> think it's honest of you to try to do it. I've not tried to hide that
> when I insulted you or Marc that it wasn't an insult. You are being
> ridiculous in trying to say that your insults weren't really insulting.

My 'Stalinist Moscow' comment was not comparing you with a mass
murderer, Jason. It was suggesting that some of the methods you seemed
to advocate (like censuring my use of the word "surely"!) were, shall
we say, a little over the top. It wasn't a nasty attack, it was a mild
piss take. If you can't see that then I feel sorry for you.
I do regret making it, however, because if I'd have known the
ridiculous (even perhaps forced) sensitivities you were going have
about it, I certainly wouldn't have said it.

> > My quip asking where you had done your degree, suggesting that it might
> > have been in Stalinist Moscow, was meant as a tongue-in-cheek piss take
> > of your ridiculously picky response to my use of the word "surely."
>
> And the comments juxtaposing me with Nazis were similarly tongue in
> cheek? Bull***. You were trying to demonize me. Own up to it.

No, that wasn't tongue in cheek, as I explained. Calling someone a
"sub-human piece of ***" is about as low as it gets, Jason. It is the
sort of thing a Nazi would write. You wrote it, not me. I'm
disappointed that you're still trying to twist this into an "It's me
who's the real victim here" defence and attack me for trying to draw
the line on the escalation of words on this forum.

I'm sorry if you took that as "trying to demonise you". That's not my
goal. We all make mistakes and write things we regret. Me too. Marc is
very often uncivil and he often deserves criticism. I've criticised him
openly myself. I just think that what you called him was way, way over
the top. It was the very "viscious dehumanizing slight" that you now
accuse me of doing when, really, all I was trying to do was to remind
you that you went too far. Bringing people's children into the debate,
calling people "lying schmuks" etc is also going too far. I try not to
ever go there and I urge you to please stop doing so.

> > (You suggested that I would be thrown out of the department for such
> > shoddiness if you were in charge.)
>
> Yes. You would have been thrown out for producing such shoddy work.
> That's not something that comes from "Stalinist Moscow" but from an
> academic program where students who don't make progress are not
> permitted to continue wasting the department's resources insisting that
> their understanding of Richard Dawkins is what evolutionary theory is,
> that their rejection of taphonomic methods is archaeologically sound,
> that their circular reasoning is on track for producing real research.
> If what you've posted here for the last half decade is an indication
> of what you do in academia, you would have been dismissed because your
> work is not up to the academic standards I'm used to seeing from
> graduate students. Other students have been dismissed for failing ot
> make progress, for being lousy researchers. If you consider this some
> sort of indictment of me or of a discipline or of academia because
> students who do poorly, as I perceive you to be doing are dismissed
> from programs, you're way off base.

The point in contention was the use of the word "surely", Jason, not my
work. That was a ridiculous point to make. Now, I understand that
universities in the US are so competitive that people probably do get
thrown out there much more readily than in other parts of the world
which are less stressed out. My work might not be up to your high
standards but I did get a distinction for my masters and I did win a
student prize at the ASHB conference last year. I'd be the first to
admit that I'm actually probably a rather poor student compared to my
excellent, much more dedicated, peers but I can't be as bad as you seem
to want to imply and I just don't believe any student would get
expelled from anywhere (even Stalinist Moscow) for using the word
"surely".

> > Any sensible, balanced, person with
> > a sense of humour reading that posting can see that it was in no way a
> > comparison of you with Stalin himself. That's just a ridiculous
> > suggestion.
>
> Strangely, you've seemed to have this humor streak that generates
> comparisons with Stalin and Nazis that pops up only when you're pissed
> off at me. I don't buy it Algis. You are trying to impose retroactive
> continuity, to change things. You were pissed off at me and you tried
> to demonize me by alluding or outright comparing me to totalitarian
> regimes known for brutal killings. Denying it makes you look like both
> a coward and a liar. Any sensible, balanced person can see that you
> were trying to attack me at the time, claiming that I was the bad guy.
> How bad they thought it was is debatable, but I suspect most could see
> that it wasn't shucks and giggles when you said it. It was meant to
> insult me and accordingly it hit a nerve.

Get a grip. Calm down. Admit you shouldn't have called Marc what you
did and "GET OVER IT".

> > I also stand by my comment that calling someone "a sub-human piece of
> > ***" (what you wrote about Marc Verhaegen) was the sort of thing a
> > Nazi would write. It *is* the sort of thing a Nazi would write. But
> > even this is not suggesting that you *are* a Nazi, is it? It was an
> > attempt to shame you - because it was you who wrote that, Jason, a
> > really "vicious dehumanizing slight" - into apologising for it. How
> > naive that was! - to think you might *apologise* for something. Instead
> > you decided to go on the attack against me too, suggesting that I was
> > comparing you with mass murderers.
>
> Marc has acted like a complete *** to me from day one. Marc
> decided to START his "conversation" by making fun of my name, then
> proceeded to call me an idiot/liar/imbecil(e) for having the audacity
> to say that the parody of the comparative method that he presents isn't
> science, for having the audacity to say that he's completely wrong when
> he professes that methods that he doesn't actually employ support his
> views. Now he has taken to calling everyone his "little boy" which is
> used (and in many communities comes out equivalently) like he's calling
> everyone his bitch. He knows he's doing it and he continues to do it.
> He goes right after me and other posters quickly and visciously in a
> manner that is totally uncivil. Piss me off and I go for explicative
> interjections. You tell me what's worse. Deliberately persisting in
> being an ***, deliberately persisting in insults, insults that you
> know are insulting, over a period of many years directed at people
> primarily if not exclusively because they disagree, or getting pissed
> off at someone because after years of taking that sort of abuse, you
> get the impression that his behavior is not up to the standards of
> civil human interaction and it appears that he has no willingness to
> stop this, that he relishes being *** number one. And blanketly
> insulting entire groups without any willingness to do otherwise,
> without any recognition that it's insulting, group lumping with the
> insults that a class are populated by idiots and imbecil(e) without
> attempts at civility is a mark of a rather nasty nameless racist
> regimes as well, so get off the goddamn high horse about how my
> comments were so goddamn bad in a way that excuses Marc for acting like
> a complete dehumanizing *** so much of the time.
>
> Personally, I'm more willing to forgive the interjective in anger than
> the persistent sociopathic behavior. Your values may be very, very
> different from mine. I got pissed off at Marc because his behavior for
> as long as I've seen him post started at a low level and I've never
> seen him attempt to make it more civil with me or just about anyone
> else and someone who insists on insulting me after being told what the
> insult is, what it means and uses it without any regard, someone who
> presents the insults to me before interacting with me in any way,
> someone who cannot be dissuaded from presenting insults in most of his
> posts *is* worse than someone who gets mad. I don't think you're worse
> than Marc though I think comparing me to a Nazi is nastier than calling
> me an idiot. I don't think you're worse because you were mad at the
> time and it doesn't characterize all of your behavior. If you consider
> me getting mad and calling someone who persistently abuses most of the
> posters he something vile worse than the person who cannot be dissuaded
> from persisting in belittling and insulting and scorning the majority
> of posters here, your values are different than mine, much different.
> I don't think that's probably the case. I suspect that you're somehow
> friendly with Marc and want to make me out to be a badguy so you're
> more likely to forgive him for being a persistent *** and want to
> react as negatively as you can to me whenever you get the chance but I
> could be wrong. You could have some values that I consider rather
> warped where you're more likely to forgive the guy who repeats vile
> actions than someone who gets fed from time to time but the vile
> actions don't characterize almost everything he does.

First of all I agree absolutely with your view that Marc is often very
uncivil in the way he flips into 'rude mode' too readily, calling
anyone an embicile/idiot etc. *I agree*, do you hear that? I've told
him so many times that I think it is not just rude but
counter-productive. He's slung insults at me too, recently (and I him).
And, sure, we all lose our cool and write things we regret. I've done
that recently here too. The thing to do in such circumstances, I think,
is to just apologise, try not to repeat it, and move on.

As to the question: Who's worse? Someone who is persistently, but
mildly, rude or someone who ocassionally dishes out "viscious
dehumanizing slights"? I don't know. Both are pretty bad. I try to
avoid both, although I fail too often.

But on that score: How do you rate Michael Clarke? He seems to be at
the top end of the scale on both frequency *and* amplitude. And people
like Marc and I tend to be on the receiving end. He's far worse than
Marc, but I don't hear you calling him a "sub-h p of s." The question
is: WHY NOT?

On that score, your slips in civility are not as rare as you'd like to
pretend. Why did you bring in my children into the argument, for
instance? How low was that? In practically every posting you have
written to me has been the underlying message (if not explicitly
stated) that I'm a pseudoscientist, or a liar and now a coward to boot.

> > If you were to accept that you went too far in your initial statements,
> > I would agree that I went too far in mentioning 'Stalin' and 'Nazis'.
> > How about that?
>
> > No?
>
> See above. You want to answer the question yourself. You do poorly
> when you try to read my mind. (Perhaps you should have spoken to Hardy
> about that--I hear he wrote something on the subject too and he WAS a
> Fellow of the Royal Society).

Another sneer. You just can't resist them, can you?

> I have explained my position. Do I
> admit that my attack on Marc was nasty? Sure. I also think I was
> provoked by seeing him act like a complete ass for a long time. Too
> far? Maybe. I'm not happy with myself when I lose my temper as I did
> at Marc, though I understand why I did it. I regret it for that
> standpoint, though I do not regret saying something that made it clear
> that I deeply dislike the sort of perpetual behavior Marc displays. I
> think he SHOULD be reminded very often that his behavior is routinely
> sociopathic. I may not have chosen the best way of doing it, ...

Ok. Stop there. That'll do for me. As you can admit that, then I agree
too that comparing the statement with what a Nazi might have done was
not the best thing to do to try to prevent an escalation.

I therefore apologise for comparing your statement with what a Nazi
might have said. Ok?

.... (snipped, much repeated angst)

Please let's try to get back to being civil, Jason. I do not want to
waste my time here in slanging matches. I've got enough on my plate,
thanks.

Algis Kuliukas

.

Quantcast