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Jury Room and Appeals Process

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Eruname
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Posted: Mon 04 Apr , 2005 4:07 am
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Jnyusa wrote:
You are entitled to an opinion, but the way you are thinking about this is still wrong. It is simply wrong.
No. It. Is. Not!

You are not the end of all things in this world and you cannot state this as fact as thought process is not a objective topic.

I am very upset by your post. While you added in a statement about plural "you", you chose to post this in my thread. I can't help get the feeling from you and others that I am being lumped into this hysterical, gossiping group which I resent deeply! I not yet said a goddamned thing that I've felt the need to edit! The only thing I've edited is an email address that I shouldn't have posted without the person's permision even though he had made it public.

I so want to throw up my hands and say "The hell with all this crap! I'm sick of it" but I won't because I have a responsibility to vote in the Convention. But, I am done with this thread. I've repeatedly tried to steer it back on course and tried to prevent it from becoming what it's now become. If an appeals process is no good, then so be it. I threw the idea out there and now sincerely regret that I did as it's totally been taken the wrong way.

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Jnyusa
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Posted: Mon 04 Apr , 2005 5:31 pm
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Eru,

I know that you are not the one who has been running hysterically from thread to thread, but misrepresentation of the arbitration decision is endemic on the board, and we've lost two valuable posters and convention members as a result (I hope not permanently). Somewhere I have to speak about this, and I am simply too angry to respond constructively in the Turf thread.

Some of the members here are very young and emotional and illogical and they speak rashly without reading and without thinking. That causes hurt, and I am unpersuaded by the argument that they have a right to express every feeling that pops into their hearts no matter who it misrepresents. We need the adults on the board to correct misperceptions and guide understanding, not throw fuel on the fire because it feeds our own concerns.

The question whether we need an appeals process is an important one, but not for the reasons you state. It is not an important issue because arbitration decisions routinely affect the whole board. They do not. We did not become aware of an arbitration problem because this arbitration affected the whole board. It did not.

In one sense it does not matter whether you raised the right issue for the wrong reason ... if the issue is important it should be considered. But it will matter greatly when we actually begin to deliberate if a large number of posters misunderstands why an appeals process is needed and what it should do.

thought process is not a objective topic.

If we are swapping opinions about Terry Schiavo, then the reasoning or emotion people bring to the issue is not subject to objective evaluation. I cannot say that you or anyone else is 'wrong' if they believe that preserving life is an absolute good independent of the quality of life. That is an opinion and it cannot be 'wrong' in any absolute sense.

But when we are talking about quasi-legal processes that affect people's membership in the community, then it is very important that the thought process by which procedures are created be evaluated objectively. Thought processes can be evaluated objectively. Not all opinions are equal - some are better informed than others. Not everyone thinks with equal clarity. Not everyone knows how to ask a question in a way that it can be answered. This is what logic is all about and why people study for years to master it.

We should always be able to explain why a particular approach is wrong or illogical, if it is in fact so, but when we say that we want our arbitrations to be objective, then we have to accept objective reasoning when that is offered and not decide that it just doesn't count if people somehow feel differently at that moment.

All of the threads, even this one, have devolved at one point or another to the argument that - yes, one can defend the decision of the arbitration BUT it didn't give us what we want at this moment. Posters need to understand that this is in fact a substitution of one decision rule for another. If "What We Want at this Moment" is the decision rule, then the arbitration procedure is Not Objective. We are TORC, just with a different person's whim-of-the-moment in charge. The fact that whim is cast as majority whim - 80% of the posters no longer like that person and want him banned - it is still whim. It is not objective. It is not predictable. One cannot argue or defend oneself against it. It is, in other words, TORC.

If we want the decision rule to be objective, and agree that the arbitration followed that objective rule, then we must conclude that the jury made the right decision and not hedge our opinion about that. The appeals process cannot exist only because random members of the board don't like a decision. This is not objective, and whether or not a decision rule is objective is not a matter of opinion - it is a matter of demonstrating cause and effect.

This is what the convention, in particular, needs to understand. Objective rules and objective procedures rest on demonstrable cause and effect - they do not rest on opinion or emotion. The arbitration decision did not cause the loss of privacy on this board. It doesn't matter if 180 people think that it did - they will still all be wrong because causation is not a matter of opinion. If we want to say we don't care about cause and effect, we only care about the consensus of the board, fine. But then the procedure is not objective, and we cannot design objective rules for it. The only thing we have to decide in such a case is whose opinion counts and whose opinion does not count - who gets to be Ted and Jonathan.

That is why I am so determined to call this discussion by its rightful name, even at the risk of making people whom I like angry. We will never be more than TORC if we cannot be honest about what really drives our procedures.

Jn

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vison
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Posted: Mon 04 Apr , 2005 5:46 pm
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Another excellent post, jnyusa. I agree with what you say.

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