There were no mindless personal attacks from me, I would question the theory or ideas where I believed there was valid questioning.
Yes, there were plenty of mindless personal attacks. You behaved in the purest troll fashion, and you were not the only one.
It is not fair to call it question the ideas if the attitude and the intellectual level is that of a flat-earther.
Also, shit talking about someone who is absent and can not defend himself is tasteless. Stop trolling.
Spoken like a true acolyte.
The all too common irony of those tossing out the flat-earth ad hominem, is the all too frequent accompaniment of a steadfast refusal to provide supporting evidence, allied to a patholigical rejection of counter positions: the essence of a contemporary flat-earther.
There were no acts of trolling, refined or otherwise - by all means cite some evidence.
And as for suggesting it is tasteless to criticise in absentia, but undiluted praise, bordering on worship, is somehow tasteful and should remain unchallenged?
Let's be clear on the context: why i posted. It was in response to the seemingly popular suggestion that Turnbuckle should be permitted to moderate his own threads and indeed had earned the right to do so. This declaration naturally leans on his historical contribution to the site as supporting evidence - which you appear to vocally support, whether Turnbuckle is here or not to receive such accolades.
Now, I challenge this self-moderating threads idea in principle and specifically to Turnbuckle. If you're prepared to hold conversation about Turnbuckle without Turnbuckle present, then you should be prepared to hear counter-opinions - to permit only praise is distasteful. The criticism is framed within the factual history of longecity posts - recorded and referenced. There are no murky, gossipy half-truths - it is about the community and the threads. More to the point, I have consistently praised Turnbuckle's efforts over the last decade, but that doesn't mean to say I don't call out unsubstantiated statements or faulty logic where I believe I see it, even if at times, that assertion is disproved. As a self-confessed round-earther, you should support this. Progress is made through challenging orthodoxy not blindly accepting it, to borrow from Zamyatin, there is always one more revolution.
I would state pretty confidently, that Turnbuckle had no desire to be a moderator, he seemed wanted to create an in effect sub-space of longecity which he could independently run and presumably felt he had the status to do so. I doubt five to ten years ago he would have felt that way, there were a lot of big hitters around and his stock has risen through both his work and the depaparture absence others.
Turnuckle, was not someone who would ban people for dissenting opinions, I would say he has too much conscious intellectual and scientific pride to do so but he wasn't tolerant of them either - from an implied position of power and authority he, in recent years too, too often Ifelt slapped dissenters down. The result, over time, given his expertise and authority on the protocols created, was to render something a supine community. Learner, astutely obeserving the thread participants were too preoccupied with 'defending the master, and not the truth". She was right and it was telling that barely anyone took this position and, as was her way, she heaped more praise than anyone on Turnbuckle, but also believed his feet should be held to the fire too, she was right, its too important a business not to. And rest asssured if Turnbuckle was on the other side of his position, he would do exactly that. Learner's behaviour was at times very poor, but she was right on this point. The rest of the community rightly viewed Turnbuckle as a valuable asset, and such as the demise of the longecity community in recent years, an irreplacable one, and became default accepting rather than challenging - this created a warped community and not one suited for scientific discussion, which is precisely what longecity should be about.
As for why specifically, I wouldn't want Turnbuckle to moderate his own threads, it is for the obvious reason that his ideas would be even less challenged not more. As is the case of modern language, defintitions of words seemed to broaden and widen to suit individuals - trolling, it would seem by your defintion, encompasses challenging orthodoxy. The contentions were always backed up with reason - flawed or otherwise, but reason nevertheless. Nor would I suggest that Learner trolled, as such. Whether it was a condition of something age-related or not, or some underlying disorder - she seemed to gravitate between one of two poles. She was through in her correspondence with me, genuinely frustrated and wanted her questions answered. She took those failures to respond far too personally and those responses too often lacked empathy, and her behaviour at times was obviously bad and would be tough for anyone to bear. Turnbuckle too often x10 a discourteous comment, but in Learner ran into someone who would x100. She had a very successful career in a male dominated field, populated by sharks, she wasn't going to readily back down, and perhaps those mechanisms that served her so well, became over expressed. But I do feel at the time that his response to what I felt was a mild discourtesy, which as is the way with the net, could have been misinterpreted, was harsh. In that response Turnbuckle stated the thread was not a debating society, which seemed to suggest that the ideas should not be challenged, that this is not the place. That I feel was the wrong message.
Learner was a very unusual case, though, and I was rather dismayed at the casualness many displayed in trying to sanction her eviction because of her quite obvious capricious and difficult behaviour - this isn't a forum for baseball card enthusiasts. Learner was and hopefully still is a woman in her 80s, with a dependent son, who was trying to push back her date with death, extend life as long as possible - that is what this site was set up for, and there really was nowhere else quite like it, certainly not years ago. A solution, I felt needed to be found, and at her best, she was a good contributor, a fact that even Turnbuckle would acknowledge. That said, I do not blame Turnbucke not wanting Learner on his thread, or contirbuting while she was here, the attacks were deeply unpleasant, and as much as we may wish to make allowances, it is diffcult not to be deeply affected by those personal attacks.
Around this time, I had a run in with TB on another thread, in which he took the most weirdest position, and refused to budge no matter how clear the evidence. Turnbuckle asserted that c60oo was only beneficial if accompanied with fusion and used a large mouse life-span study as further evidence - the 16 strong c60oo group did around averagely well amongst the 240 or so population which had a diverse range of protocol arms.
However, 7 out of 8 as I recall, of the longest lived mice were in the c60oo group of 16 mice and indeed at the half stage only 8 out of the 100 + or so mice were alive. For - if I recall - 7 out of 8 mice to occupy the top 8 positions by chance from that half-way position was of lottery proportions and they did so quite comfortably. Tunbuckle refused to accept there was anything to see or understand here, eventually accusing me of working for a c60 vendor, trying to implicitly turn the irrationality tables by inferring the unreasonableness of my position, through the accusation, that I must be driven by some personal financial bias in trying to tease out distrorted data to demonstrate c60oo has longevity properties - as if somehow the astonomical improbability of those c60 mice occupying those positions out of such a large sample wasn't enough to substantiate my position. It wa a crazy stubborn take driven either through some personal bias or because his own theories were sacrosanct. It is impossible to imagine Turnbuckle would not have been incredibly curious about these results before he converged on his theories and protocols which were inconsistent with that longevity inference. There was very clearly something very significant to understand here, but he held no interest in doing so. Moreover he took my refusal to answer as some admission of guilt, when quite simply I refused to accept the premise, the validity of the question - that my position was so unreasonable that it required some explaining - it provided an out. But it was all completely unneccessary and frustratingly the discussion was not directed towards possible explanations, presumably because to accept there was something strange going on, would require accepting the possibiity that c60oo might have life-extending properties independent of fusion - which Turnbuckle had persistently been dismissing for quite some time, and stated it almost as fact, when no such fact had been established.
Adding further to this Tunbuckle would state just as factually that C60oo was dangerous over the long term since it depleted stem cell supplies - this may be true but it wasn't proven and the anecdotal evidence simply didn't back it up. It was conjecture and was primarily based on his experience that c60 wore off, for him and others. That was one possible explanation, but there of course will be others and there was no clear evidence that c60 does this. It just so happened that Turnbuckle's theory of stem cell depletion was consistent with his experiences - but that quite obviously is not enough, and that should have been clearly expressed by him and the community. There was plenty of anecdotal evidence to the contrary - plagiarising Fermi, where were are all the Dorian Greys? That many aged individuals had taken c60 for several years and no one reported falling off an accelerated aging cliff, one might consider this to be substantial reason to revise that theory. There was one Youtuber who took c60 almost daily over 3 years and looked good on it, better than at the beginning I would suggest. That should lead to a revision of the theory (or accepting the possibility) and there are likely those who've taken it for a decade. If there was evidence of a person in their mid 70s with already depleted stem cells taking it daily, then we can be fairly confident that c60 doesn't destroy stem cell stores. Turnbuckle, though was not interested in this possibility - many here will still commit to this belief and restate it as fact, when they shouldn't - there isn't evidence to support it. It is a theory and we must follow the evidence, not ignore it. Turnbuckle's protocols were built on objective scientific reason - I have been present as he developed them - but they were not defended with the same scientific objectivity. This matters.
The reason that in principle self-moderation of threads is a bad idea for all, should be obvious once considering the objective. Moderation has a purpose, it isn't a right earned through some life-time achievement.
A while ago I was on a stockholder sub-forum hosted by a major platform - it was heavily trolled. Eventually, a couple of investors decided to create a reddit subgroup to weed out the relentless negative postings which hampered discussion. It became a place of due-diligence, though there wasn't too much acceptance of dissenters. At some point I discovered the CEO's extemely checkered past, I made lengthy detailed posts and they were well received by the community, despite the despairing news. Then the moderator in chief without warning deleted the post history and I was banned from the site - I was indirectly told that my posts would put people off buying the stock - no kidding. And subsequently no reference was permitted to the CEO's past indiscretions. So a newbie turns up witnessing the detailed product line due diligence, a large community of investors well invested, oblivious to the that key information which would have those stopped those deep-in-the red presently invested from investing. The attitude seemed to be "we were duped, why shouldn't they be".
When looking at the foot of the longecity home page, there are a handful of users, and sometimes one or two thousand guests. These people may be viewing threads well over a decade old, with contributors, including thread creators, mostly long gone. Many viewing those discussions may well be looking at them to aid informed health choices, for themselves or others. Longecity is their host, a portal to the past, and with it comes responsibility. The integrity and honesty of those threads is something longecity should and have tried to ensure, it is a duty to the truth as best can be guaranteed. Those seeking answers are not interested in the conflicts, biasses or egos of the contributors - they are trying to understand the science and make the good decisions. Nor are they interested to the attachments an individual has to a particular theory, supplement or health practise. Those attachments we create help us to drive understanding but they also become difficult to let go. We know all too well that almost every theory in biology becomes superseded, rejected or more nuanced. More to the point we understand that bias, we are all full of them, and it is better for others that they aren't able to undermine the integrity of the commuity and the discussions. Just as an individual wandering into the stock-forum mentioned, wouldn't necessarily sense what key information had been censored by a biassed moderator, so too on health forums - it doesn't have to be explicit censorship, just a product of the endowment effect, and longecity should guard against it as best they can - self moderating threads does just the opposite.
Within this field and health in general there are some huge egos, and those often leading one particular health movement behave like evangelical preachers, it can be quite unpalatable to watch, even though there is useful information embedded with those sermons, one can't help but feel at times you're sitting in on a cult gathering.
The notion of thread ownership is an illusion, but a tenacious one, which creates unavoidable biasses. Whatever the forum we know the experience of playing host and guest and so adjust our behaviour. This though when it comes to honest debtate creates an obvious problem.
The threads on longecity are not owned by any one individual and should not be considered so, the creation of a thread is merely to start a conversation, to frame the discussion - its not a personal diary hidden under the pillow, nor a blog. For the most part is to ascertain some truth that has some value to the individual and the community. The thread creator is not by definition of being the its instigator a natural arbiter of determing and managing the conditions required to fulfill that quest - the person is essentally just getting the game started. The thread community if it works well is self-regulating, with minimum intervention.
The idea of the thread creator, the perhaps most interested and biassed contributor, being responsible for moderating the posts is a terrible one - even if largely unavoidable over much of the web. The purpsoe of moderation is to secure certain objectives, and is ultimately the site host's responsbility. The presence of thread ownership creates an unavoidable behaviourable bias, influencing the direction of conversation, but it should be sought to be minimised not amplified.
A seasoned boxer doesn't get to referee his own fight because of his lengthy contribution to the sport, nor should he be able to pay for the privielge of doing so. I understand longecity has to meet its bills and ambitions, but to allow an indiviual to sign up as a member and then moderate threads they start as a membership perk, really undermines the integrity of the site.
A moderator should be an individual who demonstrates understanding and exercises good judgement - and we all know from experience, and try to build our institutions (forlornly) on the decisions of those free from a conflict of interest. In acquiescing to Turnbuckle's and others requests to self-moderate, or indeed to pay for the right to do so, Longecity moves in the opposite direction.
Buying moderating rights, owning them often simply by virtue of being first to the discussion is a bad idea for a site seeking to host discussions trying to further understanding of science. It rightly rejects empowering those seeking to gain financially by advancing some position, but does not seek to mitigate those with an obvious psyhcological investment - the latter can often be more powerful because it frequently goes under our radar, despite our best of intentions - we may cover up our ego-gains from ourselves, but not to so easily our financial ones.
It is up to longecity what it does - Learner has gone and I have already stated I will not contribute to his threads if it is a condition of Turnbuckle's return. Longecity have in effect met his demands, so there should be nothing holding him back.
Turnbuckle has created these protocols for others to follow and report back, and that does entail some responsibility - if he wished to fulfill it that's up to him. While it is possible, it would seem quite unlikely he does not check in on this thread. Turnbuckle made a choice, and that choice was his alone - the reasons he cited have been resolved. His choice to stay away is also a choice, not one forced upon through unresolved unreasonable conditions.
I have stated before and will do again that I am enormously grateful for Turnbuckle's remarkable contributions and his departure was and remains a loss to the community.
Edited by ambivalent, 04 July 2023 - 05:25 PM.