I am not sure, but with this dude- I think I have hit the 'report this post" button more than with any other three posters. I am still not sure if he’s for real or not.
Are we allowed to call another poster a troll in the Pit?
IANAMod, so take this as the educated guess of a reasonably observant layman.
No.
That’s what the “Report This Post” button is for, after all.
If I may just pick your nit, Sir, in my old hood, props was always short for the slang word “propers.” In that frame of reference, props is a measure of personal respect or even deference, which is quite distinct from “fitting, apt or suitable” recognition.
Etymologically (from the standpoint of legitimacy), since proper descends from the Latin proprius, and the adjective “appropriate” is as much a perturbation of that root as the modern-day slang noun “propers,” it’s a wash.
Eonwe’s usage, “props [respect] must be given for the appropriate [fitting, apt or suitable] use of a Spinal Tap reference” is not incorrect. 
Reads thread :::::::::::::::
“Oh for heavens sake…”
*::: wanders off muttering. :::::: *
Thanks for the education both of you. At least I’ve gotten something worthwhile out of this thread.
And, El Cid, you can pick your nits, and you can pick your friends, but, well, you know the rest.
The SCARY BASTARD is at it again. From this thread discussing racially motivated hate crimes, outta the blue in post 3, we get…
:eek: What crevice did he pull THAT from?! Wait! I DON’T want to know… shudder That is not even tangentally related to the previous person’s post. Not even by any vague word association that I can see.
OK, fine, I’ll say it. It’s a slow night at work anyway…
You all need to unbunch your panties and relax. He may be an asshole, and he’s about hte last person I’d hire to babysit, but he hasn’t said anything totally beyond the pale of commonly held beliefs. I’ve heard stronger arguments in favor of corporal punishment from pastors. Protestant pastors.
His first linked post (“I suggest that you read the Bible and get with the program - GET A ROD AND USE IT”) is the strong one, and yes, it’s an utterly assholish and stupid thing to say. It’s also in the Bible, and much as many people here may hate the fact, it is nonetheless a fact that millions of people read and follow the Bible. Even the Old Testament parts. (Not usually the bits about sacrificing bulls and stuff though.)
As for the whole ring/finger/funny debacle, read a little more closely; he specifically said “Not ha-ha funny.”
While he’s started two threads specifically about killing children, he seems to be approaching the topic with an attitude of intellectual curiosity, not slavering anticipation. He’s thinking about morality in extreme situations; is it only cool when Flannery O’Connor writes about it?
And the quote in the hate-crime thread clearly DOES follow the post directly before it; the question is whether one’s motivation affects the degree of immorality of one’s actions, and so he’s constructed a hypothetical to test the question. (I.e., in all three situations he’s named, the child dies, but the intent ranges from negligence to malice.)
Maybe I’m too quick to give people the benefit of the doubt, but I don’t see anything really damning in his posts.
jackelope understands how it is related. Maybe you are just stupid.
Or perhaps you are really poor at communicating your ideas.
Goddammit.
Time between “I click Submit” and “I am sorry I clicked Submit”: 2 hours, 16 minutes.
So, Karl…do you have a step-child?
Actually, I think you meant to ask “Did you at one time have a stepchild?”
Hypothetical scenarios are one way of determining philosophical soft spots. Analogies are another.
Inquiry into the underlying supports for various philosophical positions often requires that we try to strip away variables and present ourselves with a problem. Two of the posts referenced in this thread are such attempts: The child trapped in a blazing car scenario and the step-father abandoning his child in the car scenario. There is nothing sick or shocking about these sorts of hypotheticals. They are often the only method for determining what a belief system actually is.
I haven’t read any of Kel’s other posts that I can recall, but those two are completely unobjectionable to me.
Do some people drive better drunk?
Just…why?
Why not: “Are some accountants faster when they’re on acid, and are there studies supporting this?”
or
“If I put my maid on crack, will she get done quicker?”
or
“If I give my kid some marijuana, is there any situation in which it would be morally wrong to kill him?”
Honestly.
Isolated, they are just hypos. When set against his posts in the “people who shout at babies” thread in which he advocated the beating of infants, he comes across as being very scary. http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=291441&highlight=spare
If you rephrase that last one as “…would NOT be…,” those are some pretty interesting questions. Only as intellectual exercise, though I can easily see people being willing to volunteer for the first two under condition of anonymity. The last one? Well, I think there are enough debates about killing people in general, without narrowing the field that much.
I don’t think Latex Dude is a troll…I think he is trying to satisfy intellectual curiousity on a message board full of really intelligent people who might be willing to debate really bizarre/extreme moral situations on a purely intellectual level.
Judging from his posts, I also think he’s a misguided idiot. But I don’t think he’s a troll.
To me, his hypotheticals do not and cannot work if the “victim” is an adult instead of a child. An adult trapped in a burning car? Ask them what they want and take them at their word. A child? Maybe not the best solution. An adult left in a hot car? Rare, unless we’re talking about someone with severe developmental issues or physical issues, and the adult would still need to be one whose insurance would pay out to the adult for one of his hypotheticals to work.
In other words, given the nature of hypotheticals, I think his are set up fairly well and don’t reveal some sort of scary child-murdering monster.
His comments in the other thread sound pretty damn silly, though I’ve met plenty of people in my life who would probably agree with him. I’m just grateful none of those people were my parents.
I never said he was a troll. I’d rather he be one because then he’d be less scary to me. Nope, it’s his “let’s endanger our children hypothetically and then beat our real infants with rods” attitude that scared the living fuck out of me.
He just seems like the type of person that would have me hiding my kids protectively behind me if we ever crossed paths IRL. Although I find his brand of lunacy quite entertaining here at the Dope.
Keep on keeping on, Kel.
True enough. The thing that bothers me though, particularly about the hate crime thread, was Karl’s immediate desire to turn the discussion towards killing children. The post he was responding to gave him no reason to change the discussion in this way. Reading what he wrote, and considering that he was ready with his response within minutes of getting a first nibble on his thread, leads me to believe that wanted another violence against children thread, despite the fact that he had been previouly warned about his other posts on that subject.
Also, his clarification that the child in one of his hypotheticals was a step child, seems a pointless distinction to me. It gave his whole hypotheitcal a creepy aura that made me wonder if it was really all that hypothetical.