Banning for misalignment

[qbeac]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
------

Hi, All:

A quick note here. I've taken the last few days away from the forum, and have been working on other things. (Life goes on outside the Avalon Forum - as some but not all members may be aware!)

Regarding the subject of the thread, very few people understand how this works. Andy's 'poll' is naive. There are many more options.

For 6 months now we have been asking people to apply before joining the forum. We take the applications (and the process) very seriously, and a lot of applicants are denied. The new mods and I have worked carefully on the message we send them. (In Richard's day it was far more brutal.)

Sometimes we make a mistake, and when someone gets back to us with a genuine plea for acceptance and reconsideration, we all look at that person again. Manny will not mind my mentioning that he applied three times (or was it four?). We've all learned a lot from Manny. And I say that seriously. I love the guy.

Sometimes we ask for more information, and the applicant writes more, answering our questions. And sometimes we just say "no thanks", in the nicest way we can. We take the job very seriously, and the mods spend much more time considering applications than you would ever believe. (New mods Donna and Karelia will confirm.)

The point is this. I would like everyone (especially you, Andy), to understand this.

• We look over everything we can find about the information someone provides.
• We look at their posts on other forums to see their style, their mindset, their values, and their attitude.
• We look at their blogs and websites.
• We look them up on the net (and you'd be surprised what we find sometimes).
• I check the 150,000 e-mails I've kept since 2006 to see if they've ever written to me before, and if so, what they said and why. (Ace will confirm this, yes?)

That's how proud of this community we are. That's how much we care. Believe me, if we did not do this, the environment would be like Godlike Productions.

So. Listen up.

Sometimes we make a mistake. The criterion is:

After a certain number of new member posts on the forum (maybe 10, maybe 100, maybe even 1000), we ask ourselves this question (and we can do this at any time):

If we'd known [... fill in this gap with anything you like ...] about this person when they first applied -- would we have invited them?

If the answer is No - then they are often uninvited. We're just correcting our error.

It's that simple. Nothing really to do with forum guidelines. It's to do with considering their application retrospectively.

Certainly nothing to do with nation-states or constitutions. This is not a public place. It's a private gathering, by invitation only. JFK's admirable rhetoric does not apply.

If you don't like this restaurant, just go and find another one. It's cool. If you hate the place (or its owner ), why did you come here anyway?

Moreover, if you look like you're going to wreck the joint when all we want to do is provide our guests with some wonderful nourishment, then we may throw you out. And we have the right to do that. Period.

And: it's not really about 'rules' that are broken. (Andy, we know that you have been really careful not to break any rules or breach any guidelines - it's interesting to watch!)

It's about whether, if we'd had the gift of precognition when you applied, would we have accepted you.

And we leave you with that question to ponder. It's really about intentions.

Not nearly so much about the words: words are just one of many clues about what the communicator's intentions really are. There are many ways to read people.

Hi Bill,

When Chicodoodoo was banned I happened to be reading his thread (Censorship here?) and, therefore, was able to witness the whole banning incident from the beginning to the end, which took place between pages 1 and 5 of that thread:

Pages 1 to 5:

- Pag 1 (Post 1): https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...ensorship-here
- Pag 5 (Post 98 by Chicodoodoo): https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...l=1#post219134
- Pag 5 (Post 99 by Paul banning Chicodoodoo)
https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...l=1#post219143

When he was suddenly banned, I was surprised and puzzled (as other people may have felt as well) because we were in the middle of a very interesting debate and I could not understand what had happened.

He was indeed talking about sensitive subjects, but very important ones that should be of great interest to any type of group of human beings where power is somehow being managed, whether it is countries, businesses, companies, associations, soccer clubs, families, forums, etc…. you name it.

And those subjects relate, for instance, to “separation of powers” to avoid possible abuses of power, freedom of speech, checks and balances, etc.

So, imo, was Chicodoodoo talking about delicate subjects? Yes he was.

But he was not insulting, he was not being unpolite, or uncivil, etc., he was simply trying to delve into a very delicate subject, and it appeared he was doing it for the benefit of Avalon and the community as a whole.

Paul’s very brief explanation about why he banned him (included in Post 1 of this thread: the “purpose and spirit” matter) is so wide, ambiguous, and unspecific that it could be stretched and made applicable to a lot of different types of things.

Because in order to be able to judge if there is a serious and grave misalignment of “purpose and spirit” between two parties, we would need to know, in the first place and with accuracy, which are the purpose and spirit of those two parties.

And once those two different “purposes and spirits” are accurately defined, then we’ll be able to evaluate the possible differences between the two and whether those differences are big or small, serious or not, grave or not.

I don’t know Chicodoodoo too well, but from the few posts I have read from him, my personal opinion is that he has a strong personality but he is “a real truth seeker”, as are many other people who have been supporting Project Camelot-Avalon from the beginning about 4 years ago (me included).

In fact, that’s exactly the reason why many of us have supported PC-PA during all these years, because we really believe in freedom, peace, liberty and truth seeking ideals in general. That’s what we stand for.

Bill, in your Post #88 you have talked about general concepts, but, please, could you be more specific in relation to this particular case with Chicodoodoo?

And according to the results of the Poll so far (should be rejected: 23%; should be accepted: 77%), it seems more people in the forum may be wondering the same thing.

So, Bill, my question to you is:

Please, could you be more specific and tell us what exactly did Chicodoodoo do to deserve to be permanently banned?

From those 5 pages (1 to 5) and few posts of his, could you show us what specific comment of his was against the Avalon guidelines, and why?

Or was it perhaps because of something grave he did/say elsewhere that was not included in those 5 pages? If that’s the case, could you inform us about it?

Please, could you elaborate on that?

Thanks.

[ace]

Posted by Bill Ryan (here)
------.................

The point is this. I would like everyone (especially you, Andy), to understand this.

• I check the 150,000 e-mails I've kept since 2006 to see if they've ever written to me before, and if so, what they said and why. (Ace will confirm this, yes?)

That's how proud of this community we are. That's how much we care. Believe me, if we did not do this, the environment would be like Godlike Productions.

<<see rest of this post quoted directly above>>

Absolutely 100% Ace will confirm this yes.

"In the words of my late Great Granddad"
When truth is truth it will follow you forever.

And what a hero he was to me, every time I attempted something as a child, and failed to do it, he used to say, Never give up, Never give up!

His last breath was taken crawling out of the rubble of his house with (His Wife) My Nan's earn in his hand, laughing at the rescue workers, saying " The Ba###ds, they never got Elsie"

Referring to the German bombers, during the Blitz of Liverpool in the second World War.

Any way back on topic, It's true I had sent allot of e-mail to Bill for years before joining Project Avalon.

I was refused entry once or twice, for my lack of integrity in some of those e mails.
And fair play to Bill, once I had dug deep and seen the error of my ways (They were never held against me)

And to Andy.

Am not looking for a fight with you mate. Am not a key board hard man
I have been brought up to deal with differences face to face and ive gone
through to many battles in my life, am not looking for any more

You staggered me yesterday with your post that you posted right after
this post..

https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...l=1#post222425

Far be it for me to suggest anything to you or anybody, I know its not my place.

But maybe a couple of days out in the sunshine, sit under a tree, it's free, cost nothing
and a little self analysing as to what your intentions rely are.

And I am putting my arm around your shoulder when I say that.
Maybe you were my little brother in a past life, who knows.

That's just the feeling i have.

Do take a look at Daft Ada's Post (Everybody) maybe just sit with it for 60 seconds.
And ask yourself, Who is it being Brave here?

Respect to All and yours
Ace

[ViralSpiral]

Posted by ace (here)

We have a saying in Liverpool,

"If the cap fits, wear it"

Ace

Liverpool, France?





Thank you Ada, for the perspective and grounding.

"Whatever living beings there may be — feeble or strong (or the seekers and the attained) long, stout, or of medium size, short, small, large, those seen or those unseen, those dwelling far or near, those who are born as well as those yet to be born — may all beings have happy minds"

Be well

[Intraphase]

At the point where an open and pending operating system decision is made based on a dynamic poll of the entire volume of the operating systems storage capacity the viability of the operating system to boot from the disk is questioned.

The poll questions the founding principles of the operating system that are used by the principal operators of the system. The poll is the equivalent of trying to write to the boot sector or change the construction of the kernel without following update protocols.

Commonwealth Practices of Mutual Survival

Leader and Party

Single Wealth Practices of Individual Survival

Psychopath and Sociopaths

Definitions:

Sociopath: Does not know the rules and breaks them from habit.
Psychopath: knows the rules and breaks them for personal advantage.

Base Forms

Teams TRUMP Followers
Leaders TRUMP Tyrants
Systems TRUMP Chaos

Leaders choose Teams to design Systems
Teams choose Leaders to enact The Design
Chaotic threats to Leaders, Teams & stable System Designs are viruses.


Human System Integrity Checks & Balances

Progress Vs. Perfection
Process Vs. Event
Lessons Vs. Mistake
Setback Vs. Failure
Healthy Vs. Abject
Precautions {} Speculations
Determination Vs. Desperation



Within any given information system an outer boundary can be drawn.
To go beyond that boundary is to reach the "Point of Abstraction" where the interlocking system of meanings collapses.

Within any given information system an outer boundary can be drawn.
To traverse the contents of the enclosed area in rapid and truncated routes
without regard for the systematization of meaning and benchmarks eliminates
all interlocking definitions within a self referential system leaving only voids.


"Motion without memory equals insanity."


Perfectionist-Failure Bind
Another concept which might lend to our understanding of obsession could be labeled the "perfectionist-failure bind" (or the "superman urge"). Recovering people tend to strive for perfection to make up for unacceptable past behavior and failures. However, it is their perfectionism that prompts them to set high unrealistic goals, and when they fail again they feel even more inadequate. They cannot allow themselves to make a mistake. They must know everything and have the right answer for any occasion.
Many spend days preparing for a simple job interview.
They try to anticipate every possible question that might be asked and seek the "perfect" answer. To miss even one question is equated with complete failure. It is much like a person walking a tightrope through life. There is no margin for error, thus creating the constant state of tension and fear which is quite evident in many people. They are trapped: failure prompts the need to set additional unrealistic, unobtainable goals which result in failure again.
How might this affect a persons relationships to other people? First, they will project their perfectionism onto others and expect the boss, wife, or authority figure to perform at an unrealistic level, do everything perfectly, and have all the right answers. When others don't meet these expectations, obsessive people become bitter, angry, and disillusioned. This, of course, leads to a barrier which prevents healthy relationships.


Tunnel Vision Dilemma
Next, we will consider the "tunnel vision dilemma that seems to be characteristic of obsessive people. They see life and other people through a long, dark tunnel with a small peephole at the end, or they can only see straight ahead like a horse wearing blinders. They don't want to be confused with all aspects of the problem. Decisions are made with minimal stimuli or facts in an impulsive, short-sighted manner. With an inaccurate perception of reality and a strong need to perceive only what they want, poor judgment will be evident in dealing with the complexities of life, adding frustration and failure. One can imagine the resulting anxiety and tension when people build their patterns of behavior on such narrow, distorted images of self and others, or when they develop a "don't give a damn" attitude. Add feelings of vulnerability to this as well as other fears and helpless feelings, and one can nearly comprehend why they desire to escape.

Either-Or Myth
Related to the tunnel vision dilemma is the "either-or
myth" (or the "right-or-wrong strait jacket"). The rigidity of the person's thinking is based upon an either-or, black-or-white, this-or-that, approach to problem solving. There are only extremes. Because our world of experience is realistically complex and varied, the either or myth person is rendered quite helpless in not being able to see a choice of appropriate responses. This compares to the frustration an experimental animal would feel if, after having been trained in a simple "Y" maze, it was placed in a complex pattern of multiple pathways, blinking lights, trapdoors, and blind alleys. The use of any short sighted simple strategy to lessen the conflict in a situation of this kind would lead to powerful positive reinforcement.
The usual attempted solution to a problem is an impulsive choice of one of the two alternatives. Because of repeated failure in solving problems, the person lacks self-confidence, is super sensitive to criticism, and reacts impulsively to authority and the rules of society.
This leads to overt rejection by society, friends, and family. Resentments, hostilities, distrust, and a general withdrawal from all but the most superficial relationships with people are common reactions to rejection.
.
Paralysis of Loneliness
The next concept is the "paralysis of loneliness." Some people often feel so lonely that they are "paralyzed" from taking any appropriate action. This loneliness is apparent in such symptoms as depression, hopelessness, boredom, and apathy. Although many people appear to have social skills and seem to be the "life of the party," closer examination usually reveals that their relationships with others are quite superficial.

They have not learned to express feelings or affection with such simple clarity as "I feel," and the give and take in a human relationship is quite one-sided, mostly "take."
To qoute Lewis Presnall in Search for Serenity,

"The arts of giving and receiving are the greatest arts of life. We have heard a great deal about the art of giving, but the art of receiving is equally important. Achieving a proper balance between giving and receiving is a characteristic of the mature adult."

Although many people have achieved certain degrees of emotional maturity, this area of honest peer relationships is usually quite lacking in emotional growth. Deprived of healthy relationships, a person is unable to continue to develop any feelings of adequacy or self-esteem and thus loses identity as a useful person.



Double Binds
A double bind is simply two contradictory forces working on an individual. On examination, the inconsistencies are quite apparent. For example, some people want help and advice from others, but set up their own conditions and reject the advice offered. Or they want and need structure and controls imposed on them, yet fight vigorously against them. They want help desperately, but will thoroughly disguise their way of communicating this need. They will work hard to get others to accept other people, yet resist the acceptance of their own inner identity.

The double bind concept is a form of cognitive-dissonance. Accordingly when there is disagreement between two elements of cognition or between elements of cognition and behavior, the person will alter the situation in the direction of congruence. Some people, unable to resolve their problems because of double binds, tunnel vision dilemma, or the right-or-wrong strait jacket myth, build tension or anxiety which is typically resolved, not through changing attitudes, beliefs, or biases, but through repetitive behaviors.

With help a person can break out of a rigid and stereotyped pattern of self-destructive behavior and truly live again.


"Power concentrated wins battles power diversified wins wars." Sun Tzu



(There is a four thousand question pop quiz coming after this meaty example
fed to the lions of data addiction. Be prepared to poll your databases and search strategies for unique alignment novelties worthy of a new poll question.)


*****

Abstract Conceptualization of Tactical Grids arrayed by Search Strategy.

A TOPICAL EXAMPLE OF THE "ALIGNMENT STRATEGY"

*****


Deep Thought - Timothy Mann

An early Chess Strategy tuning program.

A brief description how this tuning program worked and how
to use it.

The basic method used the mathematical concept of least square fitting.
This was hardly new and it had been applied to chess evaluation functions
before.

Let's suppose that the evaluation function is a weighted sum of positional
features (later referred to as a feature vector):

E(P) = SUM Ai * Fi(P)
i

For a given chess position

<P> (= position of pieces on the board plus castle and en passant status),

the evaluation <E(P)> is the sum of the features recognized by Deep Thought

<Fi(P)>

times the weight given to each feature

<Ai>.

For example, a feature may be the number of white pawns minus
the number of black pawns. The corresponding weight would be the value for
one pawn. There were roughly 100 features that Deep Thought used.

Some were implemented via a piece-placement table that could give a different weight for each piece depending on where it is on the board. For example, a gradient in the pawn value could be used to add a bonus for advanced pawns. King centrality was implemented likewise. There were five other tables in the hardware for more complex features, that could detect open
files, passed/doubled pawns etc.

(four pawn structure tables of 8192 entries each, a rook evaluation table with 2048 entries and the 1024 entry piece/placement table along with a few special bonus registers made up the DT evaluation hardware. While these nearly 40,000 programmable parameters of the DT hardware could be regarded as the components of DT's evaluation function, they all were derived from the 89 to ~100 parameters mentioned earlier).

The basic Deep Thought (DT) move cycle consisted of computing these tables
before every search so that the weights of the evaluation function could
be adjusted according to the overall situation of the game (opening,
mid-game, endgame, etc.). This took some time, so DT was not good at fast
games

Now suppose you had an oracle that could give the correct evaluation for a
position O(P). If we use this oracle on a sufficiently large set of
positions <Pj> then we could minimize the squared evaluation error sum:

error = SUM (O(Pj) - E(Pj))^2


via partial differentiation of this expression for each parameter <Ai>.
This leads to a linear equation system with one equation for each unknown
parameter of DT's evaluation function. If the positions are sufficiently
varied (they usually were), then this equation system can be solved and
out come the best values for our evaluation parameters.

The trouble was, we did not have such an oracle.

So the next best thing we had is the evaluation of DT.

Murray made some initial guesses for each parameter <Ai>
and we used that as a starting point. Obviously, if we use our own
<E(P)> (EVALUATION POSITION) as an oracle, we get the same parameters out of the least square fit as we put in.

So this is just a cumbersome way to compute the identity:

New(Ai) = Old(Ai) for all <i=1..100>. However, this was a great
debugging tool to see that we got the mathematics right.

In the tuning case, we did not just take the top-level evaluation, rather
we let DT search shallow 3ply trees with quiescence extensions. The
evaluation function is then computed symbolically: rather then plugging in
values, we propagated the feature vector of the best leaf node to the top.
The search itself was controlled by the current best guess of the
evaluation parameters. These were full min/max searches, rather than
alpha/beta searches. The tuning program cannot actually search these trees
because it does not know what a legal chess move is. Instead, the actual
DT was used to pre-search these trees and the results were stored in a
database (dbf_all). The tuning program merely traverses these trees.

Now we are still lacking an oracle. Instead we assumed that in our
collection of grand-master games, the winner of each games should serve as
a substitute oracle for DT. Discarding the moves of the losing side and
the first few opening moves, we considered all available moves for each
position. Each position was searched and evaluated. Suppose that there
were 20 legal moves in one position <Px> then each of these moves lead to
a new position <P0> ... <P19>, for which we get the evaluations <E(P0)>
... <E(P19)>. Let's assume that the winning GM played the move leading to
<P0> from <Px>. Then there are two cases:

1. DT's evaluation concurs, that is: E(P0) > E(P1...19)
2. DT evaluated some other move as best.

So the objective of our tuning procedure was to maximize the first case
and minimize the second case.

The GM (Grand Master) games tell us which moves are better, relative to other moves.
So rather than having an absolute oracle that assigns an absolute value to a
position, we have a kind of relative oracle: The move from <Px> to <P0> is
expected to be better than the moves from <Px> to <P1..19>. Hence <E(P0) -
E(Px)> ought to be larger than <E(P1..19) - E(Px)>. These differences of
evaluations were used for the tuning process, but this did not change much:
we still end up with linear combinations of elements of the feature vector
that can be dealt with via least square fitting. In the program and on the
display, the evaluations <Ex>, <E0> and <En, n=1...> refer to the evaluation
of the root position, the position of the winning GM move and the evaluation
of move <n>.

Naturally, not all changes to the evaluation of the board are positional
in nature and/or are captured by the evaluation function. The fact that
the pre-computed search trees include the results after quiescence search
should minimize differences due to exchanges, but this is not always the
case. Therefore in order to avoid interference from elements that DT
discovers via search and not via its evaluation function, the tuning
program includes a threshold: if the evaluation of the root position and
the position after a move differ by too much (more than 64 = half of a
pawn value), then it is assumed that there is something going on that the
evaluation function cannot grasp and this data-point is ignored
(out-of-bound).

The first idea was to apply a force function. Instead of using <E(P)> as
an oracle, we used <E(P) + G(P)> as an oracle. A simple force function
<G(P)> would be used to add a constant force value if the position is the
result of the GM move and 0 otherwise.

This doesn't really work as it leads to a value inflation. So instead of
adding no bonus for the wrong positions, we add <- force/n>, where <n> is
the number of wrong moves (positions).

This is in fact what an early version of the tuning code did. Add a small
force as described above, compute a new parameter set via least square
approximation and iterate until the number of correctly evaluated
positions does not increase anymore.

This works, but it did not really yield better play of DT. It became clear
that maximizing the agreement between DT's evaluation and the GM move
choices and better play were not really the same thing. Also, DT searched
9+ plys and we could tune only on 3ply searches due to compute time
limitations.

We observed that deeper searches in the tuning code lead to better
results, even though it could be argued that evaluations should be orthogonal
to searching. Perhaps an explanation for this effect is that deeper
searches lead to more differences in the positions that are being related
because they are more moves apart. Therefore, the tuning process collects
more information on how individual components of the evaluation relate to
each other. For example, the tuning process did result in a better
understanding of the piece-values with respect to each others and as
a function of the amount of material left on the board (this was used
to control the transitions from opening, mid-game to end-game).

The next refinement was to make the force dependent on the amount of
miss-evaluation. If DT is just a little bit off, use a small force, if DT
misses the position in a big way, add more force. This relationship was
subject to much debate and it is unclear which monotonic function is best
suited. Hence, the tuning program gives a number of options from linear,
quadratic, square-root, logarithmic, to reciprocal (the idea behind a
reciprocal force function was this: if DT is just a little off then there
is hope that it can learn how to evaluate this position correctly. If it
is off by a lot, don't bother to try - it will only screw up things
elsewhere because this is likely due to a concept that is missing from
DT's evaluation function). Which force-function to use eventually depended
on which parameters were subjected to tuning and became more of a trial
and error procedure.

A somewhat different idea for a force function was to count how many moves
were evaluated ahead of the GM-move. If this is 0, DT's evaluation
function is on target. Numbers greater than 0 are undesirable and lead to
an increased correcting force. This number was also used to compute a
histogram to see how DT's evaluation function scores against GM moves (see
the *.stat files after a multi-iteration tuning run). This is to be taken
with a large grain of salt, because the 3ply searches are clearly not good
enough to isolate positional evaluation from tactics.

At this point things started to improve somewhat (mostly measured via
self-play tournaments starting from various seed positions). But also
funny things happened to DT's evaluation function: the range of values
that it would produce during a search became smaller. The evaluation
function became less discriminative: the values for the good and bad moves
were progressively moving closer together. It did match more GM moves and
played slightly better, but it also became more erratic. Interestingly,
this reduction in value range was not due to simply reducing the weight
for the positional components of the evaluation function, rather it
involved balancing the various components against each other.

So a compensating force was added to the correction force so that it would
also encourage to keep a certain variance of evaluations. You see this in
the code commented as variance compensation.

As we learned how to tune more effectively, it became clear that tuning
all parameters at once was not necessarily a good idea. Certain parameters
were used very infrequently in our set of GM games, so allowing these to
be tuned can pick up the wrong idea for lack of sufficient data points.
868 games were not really enough to tune this many parameters.

It also became clear that the best parameter sets were usually obtained
after 10-15 iterations, and before the maximum match to the GM games was
reached, which typically required 20 to 30 iterations.

Finally, the last improvement of the tuning came after we added the
ability to tune tables. In the DT evaluation function are a number of
tables, for example the pawn advancement gradient, or the King centrality
table. Instead of just making up a linear gradient, we allowed the tuning
code to change the values of these table and allow more complex gradients.
This resulted in some strange 3D curves that upon inspection by Murray
were found to contain some known chess heuristics, which were not
originally part of DT's evaluation function (for example: the pawn
advancement gradient became more pronounced near the center and tapered
off towards the promotion squares). However, the overall impact of table
fitting was minor and was never fully exploited because the code became
stable only near the end of DT's life and we did not have enough compute
cycles to experiment a lot with it. The few experiments we did were great
fun because we extracted some general rules out of the game database in an
unbiased, neutral and fully automated way. This was quite important
because we had to avoid the slightest hint of suspicion that we took
anything from the competing High tech effort, which was the officially funded
chess project at CMU at that time. Because of our automated tuning
process, we had a demonstratively independent and effective way to
incorporate chess knowledge into DT.

[ace]

Posted by ViralSpiral (here)

Posted by ace (here)

We have a saying in Liverpool,

"If the cap fits, wear it"

Ace

Liverpool, France?

I divide my time.
Je partage mon temps.
Ace

[Martin]

@Intraphase, are you lost? Seriously why post all this here? If you want to discuss something please start your own thread and make clear what it is. I am not going to read all that, because it seems I am not able to process. Maybe it's because I am not a machine.

Concerning the topic: I was very surprised by the decision of Paul to ban Chico, because I can't see what he did wrong and the way I see it for now is that there are topics which are not wished to be discussed here. Now, don't get me wrong we are discussing them kind of, but in my opinion Chico did not misbehave and yet got banned for not beeing in "line" with the energy or spirit of the forum.

Well, that's that and whatever it means in the end I guess it is suffice to say: "Das ist ein weites Feld, ein weites Feld." - "It's to too far Afield."
It's more than enough space to fill up a blank space with what ever one wants to put in. Now, we are all entitled to make mistakes. In the end it is all about learning by doing, right? It's just sad that I can not see what Chico did wrong, but I am not the own who calls the shots here nor would I want to be in the position. Therefor I just hope that we all have learned something or will learn something from all this.

MfG

Martin

[Lily de Cuir]

Dear Intraphase.

Skipped your post entirely, didn't even bother to read past a few paras. What a waste, as obviously you had put quite some time into it. Not all of us have your 'intellect'. I suspect you speak as you do as an 'elitist'. No ordinary person with a reasonable intellect is going to read that claptrap.

A 'Zen-like', common sense, brief comment would have achieved a much higher respect from this audience and would also have educated us, unlike this diatribe.

You missed a great opportunity to do so.

Just my opinion, of course.

Kind regards,
Lily

[felixq78]

It was indeed comforting to see that the vast majority of members (who voted) have voted to allow dissenting voices, isn't that what we are, a dissenting voice in the wilderness of the sleeping majority?
However only 71 people have voted which is a bit disappointing.

[Anchor]

@intraphase: you are a machine mind are you not?

[noxon medem]

Posted by felixq78 (here)
It was indeed comforting to see that the vast majority of members (who voted) have voted to allow dissenting voices, isn't that what we are, a dissenting voice in the wilderness of the sleeping majority?
However only 71 people have voted which is a bit disappointing.

I am one of those who strongly believe dissenting voices
should not only be tolerated, but also encouraged. (in general, and here)

I did not vote on this poll, because any poll that present me with
only two (opposing, dualistic) alternatives makes me very uncomfortable.

all well
nm

[Revere]

"Anyone who does not appear to be in alignment with the purpose and energy of the forum may be asked to leave."

It seems that this is a continuous evolving standard open for individual discernment as we have seen. Will management be elaborating precise details for us to adhere too? These clarified rules could save everyone time and grief. Or could a policy of steps towards being banned be established as mentioned above. I am just curious about this possibility? Thanks. If you do please send it out to all in a mass PM so we get it right away. Thanks!

Peace,

Bob

[NancyV]

Posted by Lily de Cuir (here)
Dear Intraphase.

Skipped your post entirely, didn't even bother to read past a few paras. What a waste, as obviously you had put quite some time into it. Not all of us have your 'intellect'. I suspect you speak as you do as an 'elitist'. No ordinary person with a reasonable intellect is going to read that claptrap.

A 'Zen-like', common sense, brief comment would have achieved a much higher respect from this audience and would also have educated us, unlike this diatribe.

You missed a great opportunity to do so.

Just my opinion, of course.

Kind regards,
Lily

Au Contraire, I found Intraphase's dissertational allusion using the Chess Alignment Strategy to be quite profound and amusingly applicable relative to human psychology and social systems. Some of us find beauty in Zen-like simplicity and some of us find Zen-like simplicity in complexity and seeming chaos.

Nancy
PS: (I admit I had to look up the definition of "orthogonal")

[Bill Ryan]

Posted by Revere (here)

"Anyone who does not appear to be in alignment with the purpose and energy of the forum may be asked to leave."

It seems that this is a continuous evolving standard open for individual discernment as we have seen. Will management be elaborating precise details for us to adhere too? These clarified rules could save everyone time and grief. Or could a policy of steps towards being banned be established as mentioned above. I am just curious about this possibility? Thanks. If you do please send it out to all in a mass PM so we get it right away. Thanks!

Peace,

Bob

Hi, Bob:

It's all here: I could not possibly make it any clearer.

https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...697#post222697

Please read that carefully - you may well have missed it.

It's a misunderstanding (although an understandable one!) to think that this is about stepping over a defined no-go perimeter in any guidelines. It's much much more about energy and intentions.

[ulli]

I think people get the intention of these two Bills mixed up:

Bill Ryan and Bill Clinton.

One wants to establish a Ministry of Truth, while the other wants a forum

where energy and intentions get discussed.

http://www.forbiddenknowledgetv.com/...-of-truth.html

[mondaze]

i will let you into a secret... i was having misgivings a while back, but then i stepped back from the lemming drop... You know why? because there are an awful lot of people here with whom i enjoy having conversations and debate. simple. I ignore areas which don't resonate and participate in those that do. The moderators do a good job, for little thanks and no remuneration, and i thank them for their efforts.

¤=[Post Update]=¤

ps. intraphase war and peace was better in Russian!

[EYES WIDE OPEN]

I voted "Be accepted as a dissenting voice."

However, I dont consider myself a "disenting voice" as my search is for truth and I do consider myself in alignment with Avalon and its mission.
However, that didnt stop the mods from banning me for a month! Paul (I presumme it was paul as Ilie Pandia was very understanding) made compleatly the wrong decision and I was banned for a month without warning.
I thought it was all going well as I had PMed the mods before hand and nobody said I was close to being banned.
The reason given was that I went off topic. (What in fact I had done, was post a link to an amusing youtube clip from Curb Your Enthusiam (see my Avatar) that tried to lighten the mood of the thread as it had gotten very heavy.) It was my way of saying lets all calm down and I wanted to make us all smile.
I had good INTENTIONS that were totally misread by the mods and a banning resulted.
But whatever.
I could never be a mod.
It seems way too easy to make mistakes but respect to all those in the mod and admin teams. Its a tough role!

Been waitng a month to get that off my chest :LOL:
Hello again to all.
The poll results are intersting. Looks like the people have spoken.
Hope everyone is well.

[Revere]

Bill...

Hi, Bob:

It's all here: I could not possibly make it any clearer.

https://projectavalon.net/forum4/show...697#post222697

Please read that carefully - you may well have missed it.

It's a misunderstanding (although an understandable one!) to think that this is about stepping over a defined no-go perimeter in any guidelines. It's much much more about energy and intentions.

Bill,

Thanks for replying. Yes, I did miss it in this thread and that is my fault. It is an interesting way to go and I wish all involved clear insight into discerning energy, intentions and character. All the best to everyone involved in this task.

Peace,

Bob

[K626]

When something comes up that really needs dissenting you'll all hear me. Take that to the bank.

Carry on.

Love

K

[christian]

Breaking it down:

Banning people for the stated reasons would heavily divert attention from the stated purpose of the forum.

Keeping the focus happens by doing so in yourself, not by shutting off others, you may simply let some comments be hot air, if you think that would be reasonable.

edit:
Of course, if someone chooses to communicate indecently, being insulting or spamming, that is another thing, I would never tolerate thugs, bullies, vandals and the like, not on the internet and not out there.

[Sierra]

Posted by NancyV (here)
Au Contraire, I found Intraphase's dissertational allusion using the Chess Alignment Strategy to be quite profound and amusingly applicable relative to human psychology and social systems. Some of us find beauty in Zen-like simplicity and some of us find Zen-like simplicity in complexity and seeming chaos.

Nancy
PS: (I admit I had to look up the definition of "orthogonal")

LOL! I was really interested in everything Intraphase had to say UNTIL the chess example, then I got lost!