[ExI] Getting People who Speak Heresies to Shut Up

[Tom Nowell]

Lee, I will address your (im)modest proposal in my next post, but first let me address the points of the moderators politely asking you to reduce your number of posts and for all involved in certain discussions to think carefully before posting.

We may not live in a fully reputational-based economy such as Cory Doctorow's "Whuffie", but on email lists like this, what you post and how you post it makes a big difference to how seriously people take you. If you make many posts in a short space of time, people are more likely to glaze over and start skipping your posts, hence the "please don't post more than 8 times in one day" rule.

Also, strong opinions you voice will be held against you at the moments you least expect: to quote St Paul "for whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he also reap." or to quote that other source of wisdom Our Lady Madonna of Ciccone, "Every little thing that you say or do gets hung up on you". For example, should someone voice a strong opinion in favour of mass expulsion of a certain group of people, at some future point when he has something to say on the subject of liberty, someone is bound to think "this is coming from a guy who last year was advocating mass expulsions? He's got a nerve!"

Finally, as our moderators like to remind us, this is the Extropian List. We should aim to reflect the principles of extropy where possible - "practical optimism" is preferred to pessimism or destructive solutions. 

Hoping for a more optimistic future,
Tom