User talk:AP295

"If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language – and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists – is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind. " George Orwell. (Politics and the English Language)

"One must have the nerve to assert that, while people are entitled to their illusions, they are not entitled to a limitless enjoyment of them and they are not entitled to impose them upon others. Allow a friend to believe in a bogus prospectus or a false promise and you cease, after a short while, to be a friend at all. How dare you intervene? As well ask, How dare you not? Are you so sure you know better? Ask yourself this question a thousand times, but if you are sure, have the confidence and dignity to say so." C. Hitchens.

Wikidebate guidelines
Hi! Looking at your recent changes to Should civilians be prohibited from owning firearms?, I cannot help but notice that all your changes favor one side of the argument. Please, review the Wikidebate guidelines and recall that wikidebates are an effort to compile and organize all arguments on a topic, not to defend your preferred point of view. That being said, thanks for your contributions, hope you're doing well! Kind regards, Sophivorus (discuss • contribs) 00:13, 26 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Don't you think it's absurd to argue in favor of something you don't think is true? At best it's an exercise in mimicry, with the end result a debased simulant of discourse rather than an actual debate. I'll remove my arguments if you like, but I'll not regurgitate the media's talking points on command. If you'd like to see my arguments refuted, feel free to give it a shot yourself. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 01:11, 26 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Since you seem to be the author of those guidelines, please consider removing that one. Otherwise one is not so much participating in a debate, but instead presenting a debate. It must strike you how bizarre such an exercise would be. Are such contributions not valuable in and of themselves? You did thank me for them, so you must place some value in them. Surely you'd agree it would be strange to remove a user's arguments only because those arguments all agree with one another, and equally strange to block or otherwise sanction a user for that reason. But then, how else could this guideline be enforced? Even as an optional guideline it would still be the wrong way to approach a debate. One should speak and reason from what they believe to be true and acknowledge when they've made an error or when their assumptions are refuted. It's less than honest to do otherwise. It's not possible to refute something you believe to be true without either violating logical validity or without making an assumption that you believe is likely false. While debate is rarely comprised of certain truths and certain falsehoods, formal logic still serves as a model. It is often useful to reconsider one's assumptions, but I would not intentionally present an argument that relies upon false assumptions except in the case of proof by contradiction. The Wikidebate guidelines recommend logical soundness, which requires both correct assumptions and logical validity, and so the guidelines themselves are contradictory. The guidelines read "Wikidebates are organized compilations of arguments surrounding an issue. Therefore, try to add and improve arguments on both sides of the issue. Being neutral or unbiased implies considering both sides and being open to change your mind if the arguments or evidence require it." I'm sorely tempted to remove the first two sentences myself. Considering an argument does not mean making an argument. The second sentence does not jibe with soundness. Since it's a consequence of the first sentence, that should probably be removed too. Either you've misstated it, or you really do mean that wikidebates are not actually debates but literally compilations of unsourced and unsigned talking points, which would be a gross enshrinement of weasel words, making them seem impartial instead of just unattributed (and possibly unsound) polemic. To presume that any user who whose contributions support a consistent conclusion is simply "defending their preferred point of view" would complete this inversion of common sense and sheer humbug. If it's not debate and not documentative (e.g. as journalism or historical scholarship) and presumably not a novel, digital form of kleptomania, then what would be the point? I want to write a full review of the wikidebate guidelines but trying to have a conversation first seems the decent thing to do, so please let me know what you think. This isn't the first (or second) time I've tried to get a discussion going about the Wikidebate guidelines but aside from a good chat with Dan Polansky about wikidebate titles, it's been radio silence. AP295 (discuss • contribs)

I'll ping you again to solicit your opinion on the above. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 06:57, 26 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Hi! I would very much like to talk these issues with you, but I think doing it by text would be ineffective and inefficient. Would you be open to a short call (via Telegram, Whatsapp, etc) to discuss it by voice? Kind regards, Sophivorus (discuss • contribs) 18:08, 26 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Not that I want to sound standoffish, but I'd rather simply talk here. The first paragraph I wrote above might seem glib, but it was my knee-jerk reaction. I ended up writing the rest because I wanted to take the argument to its conclusion. Even without any formal argument, it must have struck you that to require commensurate opposing arguments in all cases is odd. I've raised the point before, in fact prior to making those wikidebate contributions, but the discussion went nowhere. Since you want to impose these guidelines, I presume you have some justification in mind. Even if not, I don't mind undoing those edits to the wikidebate. Perhaps I've misunderstood these guidelines, or perhaps you agree with some of what I've written, or maybe the rules were just a rough draft, or maybe the rules are exactly how you want them to be and you aren't going to answer my questions, but whatever the case may be just say so. I will accept any straight answer. I will also accept no answer at all. Anything that can be spoken in English can be written in English. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 19:25, 26 October 2023 (UTC)


 * Since it's my talk page, I'll indulge in belaboring a few points: It is not my intent per se to change your resource, nor demand that you change it, nor ask for a special exception to your Wikidebate guidelines. I do not set out to write critical reviews, but if I observe something inconsistent, unclear or otherwise "off" about a resource, I feel obligated to say so. I suspect that many viewers assume that wikimedia projects are popular and frequently visited, and at least for wikipedia this is true. If the contents of a given article/resource are apparently uncontested, I can easily imagine how a reader might assume that the article is reasonable, truthful or rational, at least at face value. It would not take all that much credulity for someone to think "it's probably not far off the mark, otherwise someone would correct it or say something." An article or resource that seems well-organized and well-presented likely enjoys at least a small amount of additional credibility if such assumptions are made. Yet on wikiversity, one almost never sees a critical review on discussion pages, or at least I've never seen one that made a strong enough impression for me to recall it. Critical discourse does not factor largely in wikiversity culture, though perhaps it's because wikiversity is not a fully mature project. On Wikipedia it's not uncommon to see a discussion page in which the same issue is mentioned several times, brought up every time by a different unregistered user and dismissed every time by the same regular editor or small clique of regulars. Sometimes this is justified, sometimes not, but in any case this is not exactly majority consensus. I talk about critical discourse in my essay Policy and Standards for Critical Discourse so I won't repeat those points here, but I invite you to read it if you care to and keep these points in mind. Feel free to comment on my resources. I'd love to have more feedback on my resources, particularly if the reader feels the resource is severely flawed in one way or another. I may not agree or change the resource, but honest criticism is helpful even if I don't end up agreeing with it. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 23:16, 26 October 2023 (UTC)


 * I've ended up incorporating many of my points (hopefully in a more concise and grammatical form) into my essay, The Parody of Debate. I would love to see good debate on Wikiversity, so I hope you will consider them. As I mentioned in the final paragraph in the essay, nobody contributing to an open debate is "promoting their own point of view", but just the opposite, they're inviting others to scrutinize it. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 22:32, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Block on Wikipedia
Elsewhere, you have mentioned your block on Wikipedia and complained about it. What is it that you were trying to do in Wikipedia? I find almost no mainspace contributions there. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 08:10, 31 December 2023 (UTC)


 * Attempting to follow your advice, I've condensed my replies into a more concise dialectic answer, which should also serve as an appeal.


 * (, you blocked me for six months from UTRS the last time I used it to file an appeal, on grounds that my appeal did not address the reasons for my block. Since 331dot hasn't responded, I shall address the following request to you.}}) Several years ago you blocked me on enwiki, and I'm messaging you to request that you restore my talk page access there. I have made UTRS appeals, but all of them have been dismissed out of hand. Rather than continue to make them (and possibly getting blocked from UTRS itself), I'd like to make a public appeal on my enwiki talk page. The boilerplate message I receive on UTRS reads "I am declining your unblock request because it does not address the reason for your block, or because it is inadequate for other reasons." Since no "other reasons" have been stated, I've made an effort to thoroughly address the reasons (as they've been explained to me) for my block. Rather than asking you to take my word for it, I have prepared my appeal ahead of time and you may read it below. Assuming blocked users are permitted to speak in their own defense and are not necessarily required to make a confession and ask forgiveness, a counterargument that refutes the basis of the block should suffice.


 * I was blocked for my participation in this discussion, which I maintain was not against policy or grounds for an indef. My first appeal was rejected with a message that begins  "You weren't blocked for editing the article but for comments like "Can the ADL or the SPLC really be considered unbiased sources here?". The remainder of the "decline reason" is a misrepresentation of my argument. As anyone can plainly see by reading the discussion in question, I was arguing that the ADL - a special interest group - is not an impartial source and that BLPs should generally not contain defaming labels of judgement in any case, which is frankly just common sense. To be clear, I'm making the argument in order to refute the false presumptions that my block rests upon, which appear to be the following: 1) the ADL is an objective source, 2) scrutinizing certain sources that are said to be objective is harmful 3) suggesting that certain BLPs should not contain ad hominems is harmful. The falsehood of the latter two presumptions is self-evident: No source should be immune from scrutiny and discussing the reliability of sources is normal. Additionally WP:BLP itself implies that BLPs should not contain ad hominems. This is already sufficient, but to remove any doubt, (1) can be reduced to an absurdity with a few simple observations. The ADL is a special interest group with a long history and its partiality is not seriously contested by scholars and journalists. Several critiques of the organization are even referenced on its wikipedia article, including an article from thenation.com which explicitly rejects the assertion that they are unbiased: "Posing as a civil rights group, the ADL has long operated as an intelligence organization targeting Israel’s critics. So why does the media still treat it as a credible source? ... For much of its history, the ADL has operated in the United States as if it were a hostile intelligence organization—which, in essence, it was." "Despite its name, the ADL largely acts as a pro-Israel propaganda organization, with director Jonathan Greenblatt spending much of his time doing media interviews about students and groups opposed to Israel’s illegal occupation and human rights violations."  In The Holocaust Industry, Finkelstein writes "Thus ADL head Nathan Perlmutter maintained that the “real anti-Semitism” in America consisted of policy initiatives “corrosive of Jewish interests,” such as affirmative action, cuts in the defense budget, and neo-isolationism, as well as opposition to nuclear power and even Electoral College reform." From Tabletmag.com, "Since leaving the Obama White House and taking over the organization in 2015, Greenblatt has turned the ADL into a partisan attack machine, fueled by corporate cash and increasingly oblivious to any real suffering of any real Jews.". Theintercept: "The Brandeis Center also joined forces with the Anti-Defamation League to call on the presidents of nearly 200 universities to investigate their SJP chapters, alleging they could have ties to Hamas that would constitute “materially supporting a foreign terrorist organization.”" Jewishcurrents: "The organization uses its moral authority to shield Israel from criticism while spreading misleading information about contemporary antisemitism.". There are also a bunch of articles linked here:.


 * I could go on, but hopefully it will suffice to highlight one or two of the more recent and spectacular instances of the ADL's "bias", if you could call it that: The ADL president Jonathan Greenblatt telling the baby beheading lie to "Charlamagne tha God" . He told some variation of these lies many times in news interviews: ,,,,,. No babies were beheaded, it seems. It was a lie to establish casus belli: "There was no Holocaust survivor killed at Kibbutz Be’eri that day. There were no mass beheadings of babies, no group executions in a nursery, no children hung from clotheslines, and no infants placed in ovens. No pregnant woman had her stomach cut open and the fetus knifed in front of her and her other children. These stories are entirely fictional, a set of audacious lies weaponized to generate the type of collective rage used to justify the unjustifiable." (archive.org link: ). Others have questioned or corrected themselves since e.g.  ,,, yet ADL and MNSBC youtube channels still as of 5/23/24 leave these videos up without correcting themselves. Here he is comparing the Palestinian scarf to a swastika . Here he is saying the national guards should be called in to suppress anti-genocide protests:  and "defaming the protestors" (TYT's words). That pretty much takes care of 1). Surreal.


 * There are a couple of other minor loose ends that I can tie up. Someone also cited on my talk page as an example of bad behavior on my part, which is absurd. I did not persist without consensus. Amusing that a year after that discussion, someone (apparently a professor of mathematics) agreed with my change and told them off.   My first contributions were on the PCA article, and again I was given a hard time for common-sense changes there too, though at least in that instance the other editors had the decency to admit I had a point... after two weeks of disputation.  . Finally, wiktionary. My wiktionary block was abusive and I explain why in my appeal (which has gone ignored for months) . While it isn't about my wiktionary block per se, I wrote a short essay that's incidentally relevant:.


 * My main interest on Wikipedia is improving the abysmal math and computer science articles, as I've said many times. I've lost interest in editing BLPs, many of which are likewise inappropriate due to their ad hominem attacks and I maintain that my comments were justified on the whole. Do I believe that the subject of the BLP is particularly philosemitic, having read the article in more detail? Probably not, but that's beside the point and I'd have made a similar argument against any BLP whose lede uses ad hominems and labels of judgement, though taking care to guard against leading questions. If the consensus opposes removing ad hominems from BLPs then I'll not change them against this consensus, but nor will I condone this practice (which has been my position the entire time) and nor do I think it's reasonable to prohibit such discussion on talk pages. So there's my bid, if anyone has the honesty to address it. While I could have evaded this block without difficulty, I've not made a single edit to wikipedia since receiving it and I've never made any argument dishonestly or in bad faith.


 * Both admins have ignored my pings for a few days now. At the very least Deepfriedokra ought to have the decency to address the appeal. He blocked me from UTRS for six months last time I tried. Several admins piled on just after I was blocked (and also overwrought and irritated) yet now they're nowhere to be found? I mean, I get it. Not that my appeals were bad to begin with, but at this point those admins would look absolutely ridiculous taking the pose they usually do. If I didn't know better I would think they're suggesting I should evade the ban so they can avoid taking responsibility and save face. Yet I do know better; sockpuppet accounts are apparently hunted down like foxes on Wikipedia. So I'm not going to do that. All of my previous appeals have been polite and frankly capitulant, but Deepfriedokra put it to me pretty broadly that nothing short of a (false) admission of wrongdoing on my part would satisfy them, and that I refuse. Even this appeal is entirely polite, at least to the extent one could reasonably expect (really far more than is owed, and it takes a tremendous amount of restraint), and directly refutes the basis for my block. AP295 (discuss • contribs)
 * It is obvious that the above stands zero chance of leading to a Wikipedia unblock. Your best chance, as I said in the revision history, is take the above back by deleting it. You cannot do any better for yourself. You can enjoy the extremely free air of the English Wikiversity, which so far as accepted your mainspace material without much controversy, a remarkable circumstance given who dubious it is.--Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 08:43, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I also make the argument in my own defense, not merely as an appeal. "It is obvious that the above stands zero chance of leading to a Wikipedia unblock." Then that is their sin, not mine. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 09:12, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I think that you were really blocked for a very bad discussion style, including making very bad arguments, making too many patently untrue/irrelevant statements, dismissing nearly everything that others said, never admitting a iota of ay mistake, all the while making almost no valuable mainspace contribution. When you got tangled in a discussion about whether a certain person proposing a clearly antisemitic theory is actually an antisemite, that occasion was taken to handle the issue. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 09:17, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Two separate admins who rejected two separate appeals suggest otherwise. Not that those rejection messages are wholly honest; my point was about whether or not the ADL is a credible source (at this point an absurd proposition) and whether or not any BLP should have ad hominem attacks in the first paragraph, not really about whether or not the subject was an "anti-semitic neo nazi conspiracy theorist", despite others trying to lead the conversation in that direction. Again, I'd have made the same argument against any BLP so unprofessional. It's a slam piece. Compare with an actual Nazi; not even Hitler's Wikipedia bio is written like that. BLPs are supposed to be more conservative than biographies of people who are dead, per w:WP:BLP, so I was not out of line making the point that I did, and which others had before me. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 09:38, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * And above all that, I never edited the BLP. In fact I promised not to. And I'm still blocked. Perhaps he's a former professor of mine. Perhaps I'm a bit miffed by his harassment. Not really, but how would you like it if you had a BLP and it somehow left an even worse impression than Hitler's? At the very least BLPs should follow Wikipedia's own policy. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 09:48, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The relevant discussion is this: W:Talk:Kevin_MacDonald_(evolutionary_psychologist)/Archive_4. There, someone cites MacDonald's "Jews are just gonna destroy white power completely, and destroy America as a white country" as a proof of antisemitism. Then you drag feet. Then you say i.a. "He clearly has misgivings, but that does not make one an anti-semite." The--IMHO natural response, of the guy is "I believe you are not here to constructively build an encyclopedia". This particular item was not about ADL. We may dismiss the ADL completely, and yet NorthBySouthBaranof provides his substantiation independent on it. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 10:03, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Indeed, and that is where I should have been more careful. You can see how the conversation was lead away from my point toward whether or not he was an "anti-semite". I should have said that nobody's BLP should contain ad hominem attacks in the lead paragraph/sentence. No, I don't suspect he has any particular fondness for Jews, but that wasn't and isn't the point. His BLP was hardly very flattering even before he supposedly said that, and I wonder to what degree it is responsible for his present opinions. You're also cherry picking; the thrust of my argument was not about what the man believes or does not believe. I did somewhat clarify afterwards. Anyone can see the whole conversation as I've linked it above. His one work that I did read does not leave the impression that he's bigoted, though he seems to have received a tremendous amount of grief since then, and frankly it's a small wonder if his views are less than philosemitic. Stephen and Mearsheimer also said that at one point they were subject of a false, rumored association with David Duke, so you can imagine my skepticism. AP295 (discuss • contribs)
 * You could have said: all right, now I see evidence that he is an antisemite, and it can stay in the article. In the unblock request, you could have said: in thread so-and-so, I made a mistake when I said so-and-so. You continue talking nonsense like "I don't suspect he has any particular fondness for Jews"; you do not need to suspect anything since you have your evidence and that statement is clearly wrong; you keep on downplaying the evidence that others provided to you. While you continue to talk like that and refuse to get the point, there is no chance for you to be unblocked. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 10:22, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Yet it was their mistake, their false and leading argument, not that single instance of subpar phraseology. I maintain the original premise that nobody's BLP should contain labels of judgement and ad hominems, least of all in the lead paragraph. I don't care what they do or do not believe. It's a matter of common decency and also strongly implied by w:WP:BLP, if not outright stated in those words. I also maintain that the ADL, who falsely accuse people of beheading babies, are not particularly trustworthy. Smear campaigns are vile and in the case of the BLP, I imagine self-fulfilling. The man was an academic. He wrote a good book and I liked it. If Wikipedia doesn't want to unblock me that's a poor reflection upon Wikipedia. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 10:32, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * And while you're combing that discourse in hopes you'll find something else to nitpick, I'll say that that your arguments are just as dishonest as theirs. Anyone who reads this conversation in an objective frame of mind will see I've committed no sin. Do you think our eyes are knotholes? AP295 (discuss • contribs) 10:49, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Just look at how other academics are treated (not per se on their Wikipedia BLPs, but I see the same rhetorical prevarication they describe applied on wikimedia projects in various unrelated discussions), even those like John Mearsheimer and Steve Walt, who are extremely respectful in the way they make their argument and haven't apparently made any unflattering acquaintances in the meantime. Mearsheimer states (about public debate surrounding the Israel lobby, which is a separate subject from that of MacDonald's book, to be clear) "This debate is one where we believe evidence and logic usually doesn't come into play, and what we have discovered is that our opponents, so to speak, our critics use basically three tactics to go after us. Number one they smear us and you see very little of that in the academic world, two they constantly misrepresent our arguments - it is truly amazing how often people accuse us of saying X when we said the opposite of X, and number three we're frequently accused of doing shoddy scholarship, which interestingly is a charge we were never accused of before we wrote this book." It seems that no matter how well-reasoned and polite a critique is, one receives undue grief for criticizing certain subsets of American Jewry. I'm sure that's not universally the case but sometimes it appears that way. They can only make such a critique in the first place because they are tenured professors (one of them at Harvard) and have enough clout not to be credibly smeared as antisemites or cranks, though apparently that doesn't stop some people from trying very hard to do so. I am quite disgusted by this suppression of free discourse, it reeks of despotism and it's un-American. The more organized harassment and grief one receives, the harder it is to maintain a positive viewpoint. If one wants to be thought of as reasonable and objective, one must try to act that way. That goes for everyone. One cannot forever take advantage of the good faith of others and smear all of their critics. People aren't stupid. I see precisely the same sort of false argumentation on Wikipedia. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 21:30, 30 May 2024 (UTC)


 * It's not a tall order expect fair treatment from those in authority. What does it tell you that their positions do not withstand scrutiny? They could have just as well given me the standard offer rather than try to force me to me condone their dishonesty, bias and abuse. They still can. Still entirely an option, and if they wanted to be halfway decent about it they'd also say "we're sorry, you were correct, the article does not meet w:WP:BLP and sources that falsely accuse people of beheading babies are probably not impartial or trustworthy". That is the behavior one would expect from any decent person and which most people learn very early - and also which I, in my naivete, expected from them - but I have a feeling they'd go into anaphylactic shock sooner than they'd own up to anything. One's arguments are not merely interpreted uncharitably, but dishonesty, as though one is an enemy. They have broken Wikipedia's rules and the rules of common decency, not I, and I'll not pretend otherwise. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 00:32, 31 May 2024 (UTC)

Propaganda Laundering
I ended up writing a full essay on propaganda laundering in which I clarified the points I made earlier below: Propaganda Laundering

I was locked out of my wiktionary talk page for expanding my appeal, which had gone ignored for two months. Here I'll fully explain how badly my original definition of propaganda laundering has been debased. I had written it as "The act of taking information from a potentially biased source and presenting it in a journalistic, disinterested, or otherwise seemingly objective and uncritical manner (e.g. as a "trusted" source), thereby giving it wider exposure while lending it credibility and potentially obscuring vested interests." After a few back and forth reverts, another editor locked it and changed it to "The act of legitimizing misinformation by presenting it in the same manner as widely trusted news sources, in order to increase its exposure and lend it credibility with the target audience; in some cases, the process may be repeated several times, through increasingly trusted sources." Consider his phrasing "by presenting it in the same manner as widely trusted news sources", as if to suggest "widely trusted news sources" can't or don't directly launder propaganda themselves. The problem is simple: a source that's not widely trusted has no capacity to launder propaganda. Their definition is vacuous, it never applies. Comments and questions are welcome. Before it was changed, it was easily one of my best contributions. I'm so disappointed that it has been spoiled. I don't know what possessed the other editor to debase my work, but about ten minutes after locking me out of my talk page they scurried over to meta and made a couple replies in the same discussions I had commented in. Perhaps they had hoped I'd be furious enough that they might provoke a reaction. At any rate, given the social and cultural relevance of the term (as I had described it), I hope my appeal will be considered and accepted, that I am allowed to restore my entry, and that any future edits by others will improve the entry rather than undermine it. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 20:24, 12 February 2024 (UTC)

Allowed vs. prohibited
Since you indicated elsewhere you do not mind, I will bring Talk:Should demonstrations against COVID-19 measures have been allowed in 2020? here.

The question of "allowed" vs. "banned"/"prohibited" has nothing to do with Orwell or newspeak, AFAICS. It has to do with defaulting on one or the other side. However, it has been my position that the direction of the question is of little consequence, if any at all; thus, whether one asks "is slavery good" or "is slavery bad" is of little consequence. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 11:45, 2 January 2024 (UTC)


 * For reference, my comment was As I've mentioned in the wikidebate on firearm owneship, which I did not make but whose title I changed, it's rather 'Orwellian' to speak of what we are "allowed" to do. If anything, the debate title should read "Should demonstrations against COVID-19 have been prohibited in 2020?" or something to that effect. Laws and policy exist to prohibit or constrain, and we must speak of them in this language to keep a proper perspective. I don't say it rhetorically, the allowed/notallowed vocabulary really is reminiscent of Orwell's newspeak. Incidentally, while I've read many of his essays and a few of his other books, I actually haven't read 1984 (it's on my reading list), though I did briefly read the appendix on newspeak to get an idea of what he was trying to say..


 * This is a meaningful distinction for the reasons I stated. It is more direct to discuss whether or not such protest should be prohibited rather than disallowed or allowed, as the case might be. Why should we speak in terms of what the state "allows" us to do, as though every such allowance is an act of generosity on their part? I am uncomfortable with this. I'll quote some of of the relevant portion of 1984's appendix: "In addition, any word — this again applied in principle to every word in the language — could be negatived by adding the affix un- or could be strengthened by the affix plus-, or, for still greater emphasis, doubleplus-. Thus, for example, uncold meant ’warm’, while pluscold and doublepluscold meant, respectively, ’very cold’ and ’superlatively cold’. It was also possible, as in present-day En- glish, to modify the meaning of almost any word by prepositional affixes such as ante-, post-, up-, down-, etc. By such methods it was found possible to bring about an enormous diminution of vocabulary. Given, for instance, the word good, there was no need for such a word as bad, since the required meaning was equally well — indeed, better — expressed by ungood. All that was necessary, in any case where two words formed a natural pair of opposites, was to decide which of them to suppress. Dark, for example, could be replaced by unlight, or light by undark, according to preference." In our case here, it's "prohibited" that seems to fall by the wayside. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 11:56, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I would say that Orwell is less than fully convincing as for the role of "un-" and other prefixes to create new words: thus, the word "untruth" is no worse than "falsity" (I argue it is better), and in Czech, we often use the word nemalý, as if unsmall, to mean, not small, but perhaps not particularly big. It is perhaps an interesting stylistic preference to specify positively, but I fail to see anything sinister in there.
 * Moreover, the whole prefix business has nothing to do with allow vs. ban: these words are not formed by surface-obvious affixing. Surely Orwell is not saying that we are not allow to use pairs of complementary antonyms. What exactly Orwell's complaint is here, I cannot tell. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 12:03, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Surely you can see that speaking in terms of what we are allowed to do reflects more favorably upon the status quo than to speak of what we are prohibited from doing. Laws are written to prohibit certain behavior. (I actually had a very early essay on this that was lost when they wiped my wikipedia userpage. While several of those early essays were probably pretty rough or off-the-mark, that one I do wish I still had) Whether such a prohibition is good or bad, it is something imposed upon the public. To speak of freedom as an allowance rather than the natural state of things is inaccurate and disturbing. Perhaps it's different in your language. As a native English speaker, I can tell you that's not how it's supposed to be written or spoken. It does not favor liberty but infantilizes and debases it, when liberties are spoken of as something that might be granted or withheld as an allowance. The mass media does this all the time lately, and I don't blame you for it, but we should not perpetuate it. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 12:18, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * None of the above responds directly to what I said above. It replaces the question "Is the use of the word allowed in the question Orwellian in a pejorative sense?" with other questions and topics. The impression is you have not even read what I have written. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 12:34, 2 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Because what you've written is beside the point. Orwell's newspeak represents a reduction in the expressive power of language. The reason I referenced him is because it's my perception that the word prohibited is often replaced in so much mass media by softer words and phrases like "not allowed". (Or worse yet, euphemisms like "smoke free", and on one sign I noticed, Spanish below reading prohibido fumar. That particular sign is when it struck me and I felt motivated to write one of my earlier now-lost essays) As a result, people get in the habit of phrasing questions as "should x be allowed or not?", when prohibited is the more appropriate word. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 12:46, 2 January 2024 (UTC)


 * You might find this interesting: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=prohibited%2Cforbidden%2Cnot+allowed%2Cunallowed%2Cdisallowed&year_start=1900&year_end=2019&corpus=en-US-2019&smoothing=0&case_insensitive=true One really has to wonder what caused "prohibited" to take a nosedive after the year 2000. Incidentally, this is also interesting: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=conspiratorial%2Ccollusive&year_start=1900&year_end=2019&corpus=en-2019&smoothing=0&case_insensitive=true. It's almost like a memo went out around the year 2000 to major publishers informing them that words like "prohibited" and "collusive" are to be discouraged, with "not allowed" and "conspiratorial" favored instead. I'm not saying that's necessarily the case, but the trend is really quite striking. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 08:56, 9 January 2024 (UTC)
 * GNV:(prohibited+forbidden+banned),(not allowed+disallowed) shows a somewhat different picture. The ban-side saw a dip after 2008, but not so huge one, whereas the disallowed-side remained constant. The ban-side still outperforms the disallowed-side by the factor of over 3 in 2018. It is hard to read something sinister into this. If the imaginary ministry of ideological language regulation wanted to drive the ban-side down and the disallowed-side up, it rather failed. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 07:43, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * "It is hard to read something sinister into this." Yes, that's true, at least if you're only looking at that plot alone. A graph with individual plot lines for each phrase is more informative than adding the results, however. It still seems likely that "not allowed" is frequently used as a softer-sounding substitute for "prohibited". AP295 (discuss • contribs) 13:06, 17 January 2024 (UTC)
 * As an aside, one should not worry about "allowed" vs. "prohibited" in "Should civilians be prohibited from owning firearms" while failing to notice that the whole motion is a red herring. Highest-order bit, not the lowest-order one. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 09:35, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure I understand what you mean. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 09:38, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * The question "Should civilians be prohibited from owning firearms" does not capture any serious proposal in the U.S., unlike e.g. "Should U.S. implement a more stringent gun control?" As a result, the motion is quickly dismissed via one argument against, and the rest is noise. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 09:40, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * On the other hand, "more stringent gun control" is quite vague. It would be a more productive discourse if the subject were actually a concrete policy rather than something nonspecific like "gun control". AP295 (discuss • contribs) 09:54, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I agree that the vagueness is not ideal, but at least it is a somewhat meaningful motion. I am not sure how to formulate specific policy proposals. One idea that comes to mind: "Should the U.S. adopt a Switzerland-like gun control policy"? Thus, the debate would refer to what Switzerland does. But I am not sure why Switzerland in particular came to mind. One could alternatively refer to Australia, Canada or the U.K. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 09:59, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Again, what do they involve? "Switzerland-like" is not especially descriptive. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 10:01, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Your proposal for a debate question, meeting your requirements? --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 10:05, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I actually don't mind the present debate title. Gun control tends toward prohibition. The least productive arguments in that debate are those along the lines of "No they shouldn't be prohibited because it would suffice merely to adopt X", where X is either nonspecific itself or a rank debasement of public firearm ownership. Conversely, most arguments in favor of civilian firearm ownership apply equally well regardless of whether the subject of debate is complete prohibition or some lesser policy that disfavors ownership. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 10:17, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Re: "Gun control tends toward prohibition": nonsense; one only has to look at Europe, or specifically Czechia where I am living. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 10:25, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * Far stricter than the USA, and the purpose is mostly defeated if firearms are "allowed" at the discretion of the government. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 10:30, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * And the relevance to the criticized statement is? This seems like a waste of time. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 10:31, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how I can make it any clearer. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 10:36, 20 January 2024 (UTC)
 * I guess to put it another way, it's hardly any better than prohibition if the state has broad discretionary control over who can and cannot own a firearm. It defeats the purpose. Prohibition is not something that my government and media propose outright, but as a gradual series of debasements which are always presented to us as "sensible gun laws" by a wheedling and dishonest mass media. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 11:23, 20 January 2024 (UTC)

Your points here seem to parallel those you've made in the debate as "arguments against" prohibition, though really they're in favor of it and based upon a misinterpretation of the debate title. The "comments" below are mine, and I've copied them here in case you see fit to remove my comments from the wikidebate. You seem to have a habit of removing others' arguments, and certainly some of those arguments weren't very good (mostly those made by others, if I'm honest), but I've revised mine and posted them again. If they do not meet your standard you may remove my comments but then you probably ought to remove your own "arguments against" along with them. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 02:30, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * A complete ban on civilians owning firearms goes far beyond what is required to achieve a decent reduction of killing by them. One only needs to follow the model of those European countries where firearms are not banned but rather much more regulated than in the United States.
 * Giving the state broad discretionary control over who may or may not legally own a given firearm defeats the purpose. If someone has no history of violent crime then prohibiting their use of firearms should not be the state's prerogative. Abusus non tollit usum.
 * Very few countries completely prohibit civilians from owning firearms: Brunei, Cambodia, Comoros, East Timor, Eritrea, Guinea-Bissau, Maldives, Marshall Islands, Nauru, North Korea, Palau, Solomon Islands, Somalia, and Vatican City. If it were a sound idea, many more countries, especially from the developed world, would implement the idea. Not conclusive, yet suggestive.
 * This is based upon an misinterpretation of the question. Suppose congress were to pass a law that prohibited the members of Washington county gun club (if such a club exists) from owning any 1911-pattern handguns. This would be an example of a government prohibiting civilians from owning firearms. The question does not read "all civilians" or "all firearms". Presumably there are many nations other than those that prohibit some nonviolent civilians from owning some firearms.I may change the title to "Should a government prohibit nonviolent citizens from owning firearms?" and explain that editors should interpret "nonviolent" to mean "having no history of violent crimes". Yet I think it's clear both that and the present title refer to any sort of prohibition.

None of this is particularly complicated. You know this. I know all of this. You know I know that you know all of this. So if you're going to remove my comments, please remove the specious Arguments against. The title is okay - certainly better than it was before I changed it. Why use euphemism like "adopt a switzerland-like gun control policy"? "Gun control" itself is a euphemism for the prohibition of civilian gun ownership, which sounds much less appealing when it isn't wrapped in fluff. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 03:22, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Patently false/absurd statements like '"Gun control" itself is a euphemism for the prohibition of civilian gun ownership' exemplify (but do not conclusively prove) why your discussion contributions to most topics cannot be taken seriously. I also saw a pattern of your bad contributions to Wikidebates; your arguments were typically best removed as of too low value. You produce a considerable amount of low-value noise in discussion venues. I wonder whether what I am seeing is a certain kind of trolling. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 08:17, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Every one of my replies is sincere. Anyone can see they're reasonable points. If you don't want to take them seriously that's your prerogative, but then it would be you who is insincere. AP295 (discuss • contribs)
 * More patent untruth, since "Anyone can see they're reasonable points": I obviously don't. You get an F from elementary logic: Czechia has gun control, but it does not show "the prohibition of civilian gun ownership". Even the U.S. has gun control, even if more relaxed one. My understanding of the term "gun control" (which is a sum of parts) matches that of Britannica: https://www.britannica.com/story/gun-control-in-the-us. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 08:37, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * This really has descended into farce... I'll repeat myself: This is based upon an misinterpretation of the question. Suppose congress were to pass a law that prohibited the members of Washington county gun club (if such a club exists) from owning any 1911-pattern handguns. This would be an example of a government prohibiting civilians from owning firearms. The question does not read "all civilians" or "all firearms". Presumably there are many nations other than those that prohibit some nonviolent civilians from owning some firearms.I may change the title to "Should a government prohibit nonviolent citizens from owning firearms?" and explain that editors should interpret "nonviolent" to mean "having no history of violent crimes". Yet I think it's clear both that and the present title refer to any sort of prohibition. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 08:57, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The above well exemplifies your inability to stay on topic and get the point. Instead of addressing the point, you talk around it. You have the option of striking out your '"Gun control" itself is a euphemism for the prohibition of civilian gun ownership' as patently false; until you do, you get an F from logic, semantics and who knows what else. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 09:01, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I'll not strike it out because it's true. I already got an A in all of my logic courses, FYI. Consider that instead of making "objections" which are in fact in favor of, to use the syntax of Ideograph (rhetoric), you could have simply stated who you believe should not own what sort of firearm and why everyone else should be obliged to jump through so many hoops and then possibly receive a permission slip only at the government's discretion. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 09:04, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The statement is patently false, but if it really was for debate, how would you prove the assertion? I linked to Britannica to show that "gun control" is not synonymous with "prohibition of civilian gun ownership". I can easily find more sources. I think it will be impossible to find sources that use "gun control" as such a synonym, but even if they existed, the most credible sources (including Britannica) do not use the term in that way. This only shows that when someone refuses to get the point, the argumentation game breaks down: one gets bogged down in endless arguments about trivially untrue statements. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 09:12, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
 * "one gets bogged down in endless arguments about trivially untrue statements" yours, namely. "The argumentation game breaks down" If that were true, then why have you removed my comments? Censorship is the only way such a farce can be made to work. Vis-a-vis a dialectic argument, people can easily recognize specious reasoning. That is why the opposite side is misrepresented by strawman arguments, distortions and half-truths. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 21:45, 30 May 2024 (UTC)

Discussion on Lisp and history of programming languages
As a way of explanation of why I removed your posts from my talk page in the History of programming languages section: they were off-topic from the title of the thread and were low-quality. I would perhaps be willing to discuss with you the merits of Lisp vs. Python, but only in an appropriate venue. One could create a wikidebate "Is Lisp a great language?"; if I felt more enthusiastic about the topic, I would. You could also create a page User:AP295/Lisp is great] or the like. You may also create a discussion thread on your talk page if you want. Whether and to what extent I will discuss I don't know: from my perspective, you are a mixed bag/mixed blessing: you bring interesting points into discussions but also too many very low-quality items. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 05:47, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * "One could create a wikidebate "Is Lisp a great language?";" Quite unnecessary. I dislike wikidebates. The IP user asked an interesting but misguided question and I had been enthusiastically participating until you started deleting. My first reply was a bit tongue-in-cheek, I admit, but the rest were serious. Some of my points were speculative but only because you asked me to speculate. I suppose I'll just link the old version . You had already deleted several of my replies including the first by that point. You delete more of my contributions than anyone else. I have a feeling you're only sour because your computer does not have many kilobytes of ram. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 06:20, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I see no reason to insult the IP question as "misguided" (I am not even sure what it means for a question to be "misguided".) The IP seemed to have wanted to know my thoughts on the topic of history of programming languages. I obliged, although my experience and thinking about the topic was not broad enough, I felt.
 * Again, if you are interested in having a discussion on that topic with me (as you seem to be, since why else to use my talk page), I am not ruling it out provided you choose a venue that is going to work for me. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 07:49, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * It was not at all an insult. Rather, I'm not sure the presumption that his question was based upon (that of a gradual evolution from low-level languages to languages with a high level of abstraction from the hardware) is entirely the case. Lisp has been around since the fifties and if early implementations were anything even remotely like modern lisp, then it proves that "high-level" languages have existed for some time. That may or may not be the case, I was simply questioning his presumption. There's more to be said for it, but if you're interested in lisp you might as well just give it a try. In general I think functional programming is a very smart way to think about programming (though most lisp dialects don't force it upon you rigidly like a language like haskell seems to, or so I've read), and I think it's also a good teaching tool because one would immediately learn to structure code into independent pieces, which is not something students seem to grasp as quickly as they should if they start off with a language like Java. Personally, I find they're the only type of language I have fun using. I've already mentioned a few implementations. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 08:30, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * The IP's question was this: "Could you write an essay about the evolution from machine code to high-level programming languages? A history with some philosophical considerations?" MW:misguided: "led or prompted by wrong or inappropriate motives or ideals". "Misguided" because there was no gradual evolution? I think there was, to some extent. Even if one argues that Lisp arrived early on full of features, the other evolutionary pathways were much more gradual: early Fortran lacked full structured and procedural programming (so did early Basic), Algol-like languages lacked object oriented features, C++ shows a gradual evolutionary pathway of its own, etc. The question was surely good enough to warrant a polite response from someone who actually knows this kind of material, which was not and is not really my case.
 * I am not particularly interested in Lisp; as I said, I did a bit of programming in Emacs Lisp, and even if it has its own unique sharm, it is not something I would be inclined to program in on a regular basis based on the arguably human-unfriendly polybracketed syntax alone. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 08:41, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Being a native speaker of English I assure you that "misguided" can simply mean that their presumption was wrong. Of course languages and machines have advanced over time, I simply question whether or not there was an "evolution from machine code to high-level programming languages", which is a vague phrase but I got the sense that they perhaps thought "high level" languages - itself being a vague term but presumably meaning a high degree of abstraction from hardware - haven't been around for most of the history of computing. I had already explained this but you deleted it. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 09:02, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * There sure was evolution. I skipped assembly as an item separate from machine code and a stepping stone away from machine code, and macro-assembly, which would fit the question well, which only goes to show that I am ill equipped to provide a good answer. Whatever the open/vague aspects of the question, it is a perfectly good question, and anyone properly in the know should be able to provide an interesting answer.
 * Put differently, I find the criticism of the question quite "misguided" (but I am a Czech native speaker, not English). --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 09:16, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Your reply makes no sense this time. You certainly do your best to get a rise out of me. Isn't it important to scrutinize one's own presumptions? I see nothing wrong with that. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 09:20, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * I Googled "scrutinize one's own presumptions", but it found precisely nothing. --Dan Polansky (discuss • contribs) 09:42, 31 May 2024 (UTC)
 * Good for you. AP295 (discuss • contribs) 09:52, 31 May 2024 (UTC)