What makes this a 'forum'?

very amusing jon,as per usual ;D

Hmmn................."our lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed" appears to be going stir crazy in an Islamic imposed prohibition environment

Never mind, he reckons he's off to China soon. With it's severe restrictions on free speech, and in particular Internet access; he'll soon acquire a healthier respect for this country and it's freedoms.

So in Mill's argument we cannot protect someone from themselves even if that person shows a vulnerability that only another person can pick up on and not the individual themself?

I think, considering the distinction between the harm caused to oneself as opposed to harm done to others by one's actions, we can say that there are examples of both on this very forum. There is one fairly high-profile situation on here of the former in an individual who often naively says things without realising the harm it is causing to himself, although his actions are not placing suffering on any other party.

Taking aside the argument that one shouldn't interfere in the workings of another man's actions if it is not causing harm to any other person, surely morally it is right to point out to a person, who is unaware that he is causing harm to himself, of what he is actually doing if only to protect him from the scorn of others?

I don't actually think there was anything in Sue Powell's original post to get too upset about, I think that her views were reasonable enough. Its a shame that the Adam Stansfield thread went down the path it did. However if noone had replied to Dtg's post and just put up their message of condolence, then that would probably have been the best way forward.
I am not sure that actualy raising the whole issue regarding the missing charity money by Dave relating the full story was the best course of action.
I have got my own view but it will serve no purpose by castigating someone on here now. However its understandable why the person in questions condolence message provoked the reaction it did.
Not that I am ever going to be in charge opf a forum but if I was I would delete this thread completely because I think it is actually doing more harm than good.

The old `self harming` issue `eh! Put away the sharp objects!

I'm always intrigued by how the enormous change in society over the past 10-15 years affects some of the more established philosophical concepts.

For example, the proliferation of computer/video games brings all parts of society closer to violence than ever before in very graphic yet "cartoon" form to the extent that schoolchildren are more visually aware of the variety of ways to hurt, maim and kill other people than kids of a similar age were in 1995. You can take a film series like Saw, which might have been inconceivable then, and now you can create an amusement park ride based on it at Thorpe Park (not recommended for under 12s).

So the shock and revulsion experienced by any "normal" human being on seeing or experiencing death at first hand is absent - its not real. The graphic portrayal by news media of death at war helped to blunt this subconscious reaction, but the likes of Grand Theft Auto have helped create a strange blurring of reality and fiction whereby initial reaction to events is formed by fiction that is so close to reality that it bleeds into our everyday lives. Consequently life, and death, have very little value to large parts of modern society because they are disassociated from it: its disposable, easy come easy go, just a computer game.

We now have internet-based communication where we can hide behind a number of pseudonyms and our real-life personality can remain unknown to the people we are communicating with; although that is still the case even if we use our real names if we've never met those people.

So we have created a major part of society where personal contact is not required to make any sort of impression and consequently our reactions and impressions are not based on personal contact.

Someone like, but not restricted to, DaveTheGull can write whatever he likes about anything, safe in the knowledge that he is effectively protected from a personal reaction. We can write what we like about what he says, he doesn't have to read it or even accept it. But walk up to him, look him in the eye and ask if he really meant what he wrote and you'll get a different reaction, perhaps one of embarrassment or remorse.

I would suggest that he wouldn't dare physically tell a group of people who were talking about someone who has just died that they are illogically re-enacting the same behavioural patterns as the general public whose outpouring of grief marked the death of Prince Charles' wife (google the L*** D* Syndrome and you'll find this site is second on the list, almost as if the syndrome didn't really exist as a scientifically accepted theory). The reason for that would be a very real fear of getting an unpleasant physical reaction from them, eg a punch in the face. But he can safely get away with it online.

We don't react to things online in the same way that we would in real-life, and that also means that we can "play games" with other people without any fear of social rejection or disapproval. We can write something on a social network site that we wouldn't dream of saying publicly, perhaps because we're bored and want to gauge what sort of reaction we can prompt. So actually our online characteristics and personality are completely different to our real-live person. Back in the days of mervo's site there was a particularly aggressive poster who would continually berate, belittle and dismiss others but when I finally met him at Plainmoor he was quiet and shy, almost as if he had a split personality. I think he probably did, but only one of them came out from behind the keyboard.

So my strong belief is that our personalities are not the same in real-life as they are online; that we become different people online than we are in reality. As loyalgull alludes to, we've developed our social behaviour over thousands of years of personal interaction but we haven't managed to create acceptable behavioural patters for online interactions. And in those situations the works of Freud, Jung, Taylor and especially Desmond Morris become inapplicable as they are all based on real-life observations which don't apply online.

What we need is a philosopher for the modern age, someone who can identify online behaviour and explain it; but also identify solutions to those who cross the line into socially unacceptable behaviour.

Rags, I think the internet troll is little different from the poison pen-letter writer or the heckler at public gatherings in former times - both of whom benefited from comparable levels of anonymity and no doubt a similar capacity to be a nuisance. I actually think forums such as this manage very well all things considered. Granted, the internet poses challenges but it's main effect is simply to make the concept of 'free speech' a reality - something that not everyone appreciates or enjoys.