Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Thursday, December 27, 2012

You Are Not of the Body! UPDATED

This comment apparently did not meet the exacting moderating standards at the Robot Cult zine h+, but you might be surprised to read what comments do meet those standards. How could anybody ever suggest these guys act like True Believers?

UPDATE: Classic! Not only has my comment been deleted to protect the beliefs of the credulous, but two comments have appeared falsely alleging that I am posting multiple comments under pseudonyms as an excuse for this panic stricken wagon-circling among the Robot Cultists. Needless to say, I do not expect any public correction of the record will be forthcoming. Of course, actual readers of mine know that I always publish under my full name -- as actual readers of mine also know my ridiculous verbosity and acerbic overstrenuousness would be hard to conceal behind a pseudonym in any case.

35 comments:

Anonymous said...

Natasha has laid down the law, dissent is Not Welcome, especially from D. Carrico. Very telling that the Robot Cult is so sensitive and tender that is can't even handle even a faint whiff of challenge.

jimf said...

> You Are Not of the Body!

You are not of the party. So get the hell out of
my house!

> How could anybody ever suggest these guys act like True Believers?

Well, following the infamous Affaire Loosemore, 6 years ago, a
certain Paragon of Human Rationality
( http://www.thejach.com/view/2012/03/are_you_a_rationeliezer )
explained the sitch thusly:

http://eugen.leitl.org/postbiota/sl4/0608/15930.html
----------------
META: To SL4's readership
From: Eliezer S. Yudkowsky (sentience@pobox.com)
Date: Thu Aug 31 2006 - 00:22:18 MDT

. . .

If you're a new subscriber, please rest assured that recent events on
SL4 are not typical. I think that this, these events of August 2006, is
the worst I can ever recall seeing it. I hope it does not happen again.

I suspect that SL4's policies need to be clarified. In particular, I
think that the front page needs to make clear that SL4 is a moderated
list, that the moderation is autocratic rather than democratic, that
some baby may get thrown out occasionally with the bathwater and this is
the cost we all pay, that moderation policies may be criticized all you
like but we will go on doing it anyway, that this is the foundation and
the price of SL4's existence, and if you don't like it there are plenty
of other mailing lists. . .

[T]he List Owner. . . reserves the right to ban anyone, at any time,
without even giving a reason. . . [T]he List Owner reserves the right of
Whim Death, and has exercised it in the past, and will exercise it as
whim takes him, possibly on you; and this is part of the foundation of
SL4, which no one is required to agree with or approve of, but which
they should nonetheless be warned of. . .

This list is, in the end, a party held in my living room. I surely
don't ask you to be grateful for that, or respect me for it, and Heaven
forbid that I should ask you to bow before me; but from time to time, I
might kick someone out of my living room. That's life. . .

Black guy from the future past said...

Ya know Dale, when I first encountered your blog, I seriously did not understand why you would call transhuamnism a cult, it was not immediately apparent to me that they were one. I saw no places of worship, no gods that they worshiped, it was not immediately apparent to me that there were correlations between religion and transhumanism, the falseness of it. But now... I see your point.

Oh and this link here might interest you:
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/12/andrew-herr/

It seems your point about the connections between futuristic superlativity and the current military industrial complex is quite salient.

Black guy from the future past said...

Oh and truth be told Dale, the guy named "Bob" who was criticizing transhumanism is me. I frequented the site daily and fell for all the bullshit about "a magical future" where I would be some immortal robot god. The promise was alluring, thanks for breaking the spell. Oh and I've been blocked from posting on the site, just like you. Seems like this cult is hell bent on laying down the ban hammer.

Anonymous said...

Talking to your own sock puppets is a sign of serious mental difficulty. Seek help.

Anonymous said...

Hplus/Natasha is still a bit flinchy about the PR implications of the editorship of their flagship website being recently and carelessly handed over to an 'out' neo nazi who collects an SSDI check for mental illness ; this individual also engages in crowd sourced financial fraud and psychotic bouts of street level stalking all decked out with the most garish and crude 'art' and juvenile costumes imaginable... they were warned not to allow this mentally ill and malicious person such a role (and provided with a long and meticulously documented history of her criminal grifting and libel and general cray cray), but they richly deserve the consequences.

Dale Carrico said...

I see the totally not a cult Robot Cult is indulging in total war character assassination of ex-member Rachel Haywire like cults always can be counted upon to do. Of course, maybe this person does have problems, in my experience people involved in cults usually do.

Anonymous said...

I can see all of the IP addresses you are using Dale. I can trace them and track them and block them...please stop. If you don't agree with something we post, you are free to comment using one account and one name only. Contrary to your lies I am not censoring you but rather giving you a lot of leeway to actually comment om our blog. Posting identical text from several pseudonyms sort of gives it away despite your claims though. FAIL.

Dale Carrico said...

The bravely anonymous person who posted that sock puppet comment (which I published by the way, not that anybody's counting) should be commended for their commitment to the bit if nothing else.

Dale Carrico said...

I can see all of the IP addresses you are using Dale.

Presumably this is actually a fact-checkable claim. I know I am not lying, and I have to assume that either you are making some kind of error or you know you are lying, too.

"People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead." --
James Baldwin

Anonymous said...

Peter Rothman is a Very Serious Boy with a Very Serious Scowl with very Flappity Jowls.

SERIOUS, can't you tell the boy is SERIOUS?

Anonymous said...

Dale, I know about using proxies.You or someone else posted the nearly identical text from three different IP addresses including your own real one that I traced to you. Of course some one out there might be impersonating you and if so I stand corrected. I wonder who would do that and why?

Dale Carrico said...

I don't use proxies, I am not exactly a sleek bleeding edge hacker type you will be unsurprised to discover, but I also find it very hard to believe that anybody would be impersonating me. I published my comment to h+ as a post here -- is it possible that folks who liked the post cut and pasted it from Amor Mundi and tried to post it there to annoy you? Or could there be an even more obvious explanation -- involving me checking back to see if the comment had been allowed or disallowed? I get it that you can't be particularly pleased to hear my relentless criticism of your views, but if you actually read my writing you will discover I have been a critical scholar of transhumanist and other futurological discourse for well over twenty years. The kind of infantile nonsense you are accusing me of is really rather ridiculous.

Dale Carrico said...

I just looked up Peter Rothman and see that he is the current editor of h+. I'm not sure the editor of the magazine would be the person tasked to moderate online comments, you know. And anyway I do think all this is rather amusing and revealingly symptomatic and all, but there's no need for anybody's temperatures to rise after all.

Anonymous said...

I couldn't care less about your opinions and as I stated I will allow you to comment on H+. One and only one comment per topic under a single user account or name. No sock puppets or multiple postings from multiple accounts. No personal attacks, name calling, or obscenities directed at others.

If you aren't lying then you have a attracted a stalker that is trying to impersonate you. Really.

Anonymous said...

Rothman in fact runs the entire website, he has that entire unenviable task. He has demanded in the past that those unhappy with his ham fisted censorship email him personally. Rothman is 'sole proprietor' answering only to Mom of Mom's Robot Oil Company, aka NVM.

http://slurmed.com/fanart/javier/227_mom's-old-fashioned-robot-oil.png



Dale Carrico said...

I am not lying, I do not use multiple accounts, I do not use sock puppets. Probably you would say that I do engage in name calling, after all I know some Robot Cultists (you may regard that very term as merely name calling for all I know) regard me as indulging in hate speech simply because I point out what I take to be negative entailments of their views which they do not consciously affirm (as if wishing makes entailments no longer so), hence any sufficiently radical disagreement risks characterization as personal attack in certain circles of True Belief. Anyway, the one comment I posted to you (apart from a complaint about your false allegation which you also did not publish) if available in full here if you care to redeem yourself.

Anonymous said...

no one even reads that crapulous webpage except other kool aid drinkers and Trekkies ....

Dale Carrico said...

Hey, now, I'm a Trekker and so's my boyfriend.

Anonymous said...

check out the LEXX, they call it "Star Trek's Slutty Little Sister"...

very original, very camp, very funny while still more or less remaining ripping good sci fi ....

jimf said...

> I couldn't care less about your opinions and as I stated I will
> allow you to comment on H+. One and only one comment per topic
> under a single user account or name. No sock puppets or multiple
> postings from multiple accounts. No personal attacks, name calling,
> or obscenities directed at others.
>
> If you aren't lying then you have a attracted a stalker that is
> trying to impersonate you. Really.

Dale! I think it must be this guy:

http://jezebel.com/5971457/man-who-posed-as-adam-lanzas-uncle-once-sued-justin-bieber-for-stealing-his-credit-card-to-pay-for-penis-enlargement

Golly, the people who are attracted to >Hist Web
sites these days!

Dale Carrico said...

We love Lexx too. Anti-futurologists we may be (as any champion of consensus science or progressive policy should be), but this is a serious queergeek household.

Dale Carrico said...

Dale! I think it must be this guy

Another data point for the schlongularity thesis.

Anonymous said...

nah, this has ALL the hallmarks of the work of a Ninja Clan.

Black guy from the future past said...

Wow this anon is clearly rage filled. What is your name anon? What is this sock puppet you speak of? The one named "Bob" on the h+ site is ME "the black guy from future past". I like Dale's posts, his sharp and absolutely salient criticisms of "transhumanist" crapola, and I posted on H+ under the name "Bob". Dale Carrico posts under the name Dale Carrico. So stop making shitty accusations that have no basis in reality.

But please don't take this as a sign of attack for you to leave the site. Please stay, read and learn something. Learn about how the "ideas" you subscribe to have absolutely no merit or basis in reality. Learn as I have that "transhumanism" is complete nonsense.

Anonymous said...

see also the 1970 "Futurological Congress" by Stanislaw Lem ...

Dale Carrico said...

I'm pretty sure there are a few Anons posting, hey nonny. And now that this thread has moved already to the penis and ninja jokes phase I doubt any Robot Cultists are likely to get much food for critical thought dwelling in this champagne room for long. Unless they care for a lap dance?

Dale Carrico said...

Hey, I have taught Lem to undergraduates.

Anonymous said...

wow. none - NONE - of the college courses I took ever came within a million miles of Lem studies... such a thing happens? How rare and wonderful....

Dale Carrico said...

In the rhetoric department at Berkeley I have been lucky enough to teach courses on narrative selfhood in graphic novels, biopunk literature and boiethical discourse, environmentalist p2p-politics, English comedies of manners and punk/glam subcultures, market fundamentalism and radical democracy in bestsellers, all sorts of wonderful stuff. Of course, usually I teach surveys of Roman/Greek oratory or 20C critical and cultural theory, or my introduction to critical thinking and nonviolence, those are a bit more conventional but also great fun. I teach sf in many of my classes, usually Octavia Butler, but Lem, Ballard, Sterling, lots of stuff comes up.

Anonymous said...

I get a kick out of how much Lem hated Tarkovsky's conversion of "Solaris" into a religious meditation. Especially as Pope John Paul II was a college room mate of Lem's and the Atheist and the Pope were lifelong friends.

Dale Carrico said...

Mmmmmmmmm, Tarkovsky.

Anonymous said...

Tarkovsky also converted the rather bland and uninteresting scifi novel "Roadside Picnic" into one of the finest works of film ever produced ie "Stalker." One of the rare cases where a film is orders of magnitude greater than the source text.

Tarkovsky was a real master of Détournement of genre - but not the classic détournement of capitalism, it was a détournement of reductionist material assumptions toward the Spiritual... actually those are so intertwined it makes no difference.

jimf said...

> Anonymous [Peter Rothman, presumably] said...
>
> If you don't agree with something we post, you are
> free to comment using one account and one name only.
> Contrary to your lies I am not censoring you but rather
> giving you a lot of leeway to actually comment om our blog

I notice this morning that the comments from "Bob" (whoever
he may be) that initiated the accusations of sockpuppetry at
http://hplusmagazine.com/2012/12/21/who-wants-to-live-the-longest/
(including the first such comment, which contained a link to
this blog) have now all disappeared, apart from the final
one, in which "Bob" claims not to be "Dale Carrico".

Amidst all the kerfuffle, Dale's original comment,
http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2012/12/diatribe-against-robot-tribe.html
has still never in fact appeared in the h+ comment thread.

That's what Rothman calls "leeway"!

Of course it would be remiss of Mr. Rothman at this point
(in some folks' eyes, I'm sure) not to take advantage of even
a flimsy excuse to ban Dale from commenting at h+ permanently, as
a troll and public nuisance and an all-around party pooper
and source of cognitive dissonance to his loyal readers.

One hopes this incident at least served as a lesson to "Bob"
(whoever he may be) that his (presumably well-meaning)
intervention at h+ on Dale's behalf may well have done little more than
provide Rothman and his employers with a pretext to take the
sort of action which web-forum moderators must sometimes **legitimately**
take when hostile or over-enthusiastic (or sometimes outright
mentally ill) participants attempt to disrupt or hijack
a discussion. As the saying goes, with friends like those. . .

Dale Carrico said...

Yeah, I noticed that the final verdict seemed to be to scrub any form of criticism from me as well as every false allegation about me as well as nearly every mention of me, except a brief self-congratulatory outburst about how they welcome criticism which in fact they censored without justification. Fairly par for the course, I'd say, for cultists engaging in sanewashing PR in a minor kerfuffle with a critic.