Enjoy.

[deadDMwalking]

God just imagine if he actually had the self awareness to realize that if he stopped championing....

As I've explained several times: I know that pointing out shitty people lying is not going to go down well with the shitty people who lie.

I believe in doing the right thing even when it's unpopular.

The problem is that you're a very bad judge of who is a shitty person lying.  You CONTINUALLY make the assertion that people that don't like you must be shitty people who lie because you seem incapable of grasping the idea that people might dislike you for ACTUAL REASONS (as has been discussed and explained in excruciating detail over and over in this thread AND where you have demonstrated those exact behaviors). 

There may be other shitty people that you talk to, Zak, but that doesn't mean you aren't one, too.  I assert you are. 

[Zak S]

Much has happened in the world in the last week or so but the burden of proof fallacy has not been repealed.

If you want to claim I did something wrong, burden of proof remains on the accuser. You can't provide it.

You began the conversation with a personal attack:

https://www.therpgsite.com/the-rpgpundit-s-own-forum/enjoy/375/

So, that's a first-strike personal attack. I don't need to consider your claims or address them. No one does. You're a troll.

Now you do claim I broke faith first, justifying your trolling behavior, but when asked for proof of this accusation you didn't give them, in post 870 above.

[deadDMwalking]

If you want to claim I did something wrong, burden of proof remains on the accuser. You can't provide it.

Actually, I can. I have before. 

Trying to argue that every discussion requires a specified target audience is assinine. 

Staking out a position in the English language includes a presumed [to me].  'This is shit and this is why' is functionally the same as 'this is shit to me and this is why'.  The 'to me' is presumed because you're the one speaking. 

Incorrect.

Some things are facts (the math here doesn't add up, it is a mistake, no-one would defend it or use it once the mistake's pointed out), some things are opinions (I don't like how the math here adds up,it leads to consequences I don't liek but clearly other people do like).

Confusing those two things confuses the discussion and confuses fact with opinion. And leads to factual errors.

Factual errors in public lead to bullshit.

You can pretty much say what you like in public, but when you lie on purpose in a supposed conversation about nonfictional things you are basically making everything worse. Every time.

A conversation about practical things based on inaccurate facts as a given is a useless conversation. All the conclusions are suspect.

You are essentially defending your right to be confused or confuse people in order to score rhetorical points.

The fact that there are some people who might be able to do that DOES NOT indicate that having tools for those who are not is somehow less desireable. 

I do not understand why you would feel compelled to make this obvious point.

For the 6th time See this thread, page 11, Zak's second comment, item #2.

Do you not see that?

Do you not see that?

Do you not see that?

Do you not see that?

Do you not se that?

Why are you acting like you can't see that?

Why do I have to even point that out to you?

I'll take the drama of an internet shit-storm that actually produces interesting discussion to a 'let everyone find whats suits them best and never suggest improvements under any circumstances'.

Again, this seems to be another case of basic illiteracy on your part.

"Don't pretend your opinion is a fact" is not the same as "Do not propose that x improvement might work in y case".

If you think that it does then you need to make that argument rather than saying

"IF I CAN'T START A MONKEY SHIT-FIGHT THEN I CAN'T ACTUALLY PUBLICALLY PROPOSE A RULES IMPROVEMENT!"

You can and it is often done. You go "I like this. Nothing extant provides that. I have created this. Try it."

Holy shit, dude did that never occur to you ever in your life and your mind is just blown?

Probably not. Probably you realized it's possible to discuss rules improvements without being a douche it's just not fun for you.

That part about 'basic illiteracy' is an insult (and also obviously and factually untrue as you quoted my typed response - an obvious rebuttal to an accusation of illiteracy).  Your post was also very demeaning.  Ultimately, I called you out on unreasonable standards of debate, and you attacked ME because you didn't like what I had to say.  Prior to that I did not say anything directly insulting to you.  I did say that your analogy 'rules are like training wheels' was a bad analogy, and tried to offer a better one 'rules are like bikes, and stripping away rules to give you a functionally similar device that works for some people with great skill like a unicycle' which isn't inherently insulting - in fact, I was giving you the benefit of being 'an exceptionally good GM' who could get the same performance out of a unicycle as someone else could out of a bike.  But again, that'd be litigating the past. 

I don't call you an asshole because you were a jerk in 2013.  I call you an asshole because you are an asshole in 2022.  You STILL DO THE SAME THINGS and numerous people who CAME TO THIS THREAD TO DEFEND YOU have since come to the recognition that you're an asshole. 

[Zak S]

That part about 'basic illiteracy' is an insult....

This all appear to be very old, which is fine, but we'll need to establish order-of-events to understand what you're on about:

Was this before or after your false claim about your tongue-shoving?

[deadDMwalking]

Zak,

Of course this was before.  Well before.  But your 'accusation' has been 'rebutted' since you seem to accept that you were at least dismissive toward me if not insulting.  If you THINK that I was insulting BEFORE this and you were JUSTIFIED in this type of behavior, it's up to YOU to find me being an ass to you.  Because if you're making an accusation, blah blah burden of proof blah blah blah. 

You're an asshole Zak.  You've been an asshole to me, and to MANY OTHERS that haven't deserved it.  You're INCAPABLE of acting any other way.  It is my sincere hope that you begin to recognize it. 

[Zak S]

Zak,

Of course this was before.  Well before.

Ok, thanks.

So, again, to establish order-of-events, please link to what you believe to be our first interaction.

[deadDMwalking]

Zak,

Of course this was before.  Well before.

Ok, thanks.

So, again, to establish order-of-events, please link to what you believe to be our first interaction.

So just to be clear, you're asking ME to provide evidence that I WASN'T a jerk prior to this because you're unwilling to assume burden of proof the way you ask others to do?  I mean, clearly if you thought I was a jerk first, you'd want to find it.  If I posted something that I claimed was our first interaction, would you accept that?  Since it would make you look bad, I'd think you'd want to find a justification yourself. 

But sure, Zak, even though your modus operandi is to make people jump through increasingly difficult hoops just to have a conversation (otherwise you accuse them of being trolls and thus of no worth and not even deserving of life-saving treatment if they were in an auto accident), it sounds like you're agreeing that you were a jerk in the quote above?  Since you're infamous for shifting goal posts, I'd really appreciate you being clear - do you think that you weren't a jerk in the quote above, or do you think you were justified being a jerk because you think I was a jerk first? 

I mean, for myself, I don't think 'he was a jerk first' is a very good defense, and I think 'I'm not a jerk' is laughable based on the massive amounts of evidence to the contrary, but if I play your game, I'd like to know what the POINT even is.  I mean, while finding the 'first post' we interacted in is trivially easy, it's still an extra (and really unnecessary) amount of effort on my part. 

PS - I've seen you tell people that they should just 'ask for clarification' and then tell them that 'the amount of work to provide the clarification they asked for is too much, so you won't do it unless they agree without even seeing it that if you provide it they'll agree you were right the whole time.  I'm not going to ask that of you.  But I really do think it's important to remind people of your DEMONSTRATED double-standards. 

[Zak S]

So just to be clear, you're asking ME to provide evidence that I WASN'T a jerk prior to this because you're unwilling to assume burden of proof the way you ask others to do?

No. Your claim is I broke good-faith argument with you first.

That's a claim you made.

So: provide proof, not just a random interaction from the middle of our conversation. You have to prove it's me initiating.

[deadDMwalking]

So just to be clear, you're asking ME to provide evidence that I WASN'T a jerk prior to this because you're unwilling to assume burden of proof the way you ask others to do?

No. Your claim is I broke good-faith argument with you first.

That's a claim you made.

So: provide proof, not just a random interaction from the middle of our conversation. You have to prove it's me initiating.

No, Zak.  You're putting words in my mouth, again.  I claim you are an asshole. I don't accuse you of 'breaking a good faith argument'.  I don't accuse you of EVER HAVING PARTICIPATED in a good-faith argument. 

But since you've asked and I already told you providing our first interaction (that is, my first participation in a conversation you were already engaged in) is quoted in full below:

It took a while to get caught up on the discussion thus far.

To Zak S's argument that rules are like 'training wheels', I would like to disagree and help to refine the analogy. You've already agreed that certain rules are necessary - you don't want 'no rules'. For a proper functioning bike, there are certain common elements that are required. Tires, gears, steering, and a seat.

I can ride a bike without a seat, but you can bet that it is something I'm going to add on immediately. There are things that I can't ride a bike without. I need tires.

Now, I will fully admit that there are people who are more skilled riders than I am. Some of them can even ride a unicycle better than I can ride a bike. On a unicycle they can do tricks, steer - anything I can do on a bike. The fact that there are more skilled riders that can achieve a 'bike' experience on a unicycle does not mean I would be disappointed to buy a bicycle and find it came with only one tire.

While it could function 'for some people' - it would not function 'for me' - at least not without far more effort than I am willing to put in.

Other accessories - like a basket or training wheels - are designed to be ignored or removed - but removing them does not alter the underlying functioning of the bike.

When you say 'superfluous rules get in your way' - I take that to mean you don't actually need a bike. You're fine with a unicycle. I'm fine with that. And if someone wants to produce a bicycle for me and a unicycle for you, I'm fine with that as well.

But if that person came to these forums and asked about what I was looking for in a bike, I would tell them my honest opinion. Hopefully, they'll be able to figure out whether bicycles or unicycles are more desired and/or more fun to produce. There's no reason they can't maintain their integrity and achieve financial success.

And of course - if something 'is bad', that implies 'bad for me'. And that's sufficient. If I tell a designer 'this is a bad rule', I'll usually explain why it is bad for me, but I'm under no obligation to explain why it is bad to some audiences but not others. If my perspective is representative, the designer may want to include my observations. If my criticisms are not representative, they may want to ignore me. It is the obligation of the person receiving criticism to determine if the one offering the criticism can be relied upon. We would expect different criticisms from different corners depending on their preferences. Clearly identifying our underlying preferences each time we provide a comment would be unduly cumbersome and fraught with imprecision.

Presumably, someone asking for discussion on their rule on a public formum is interested in a wide variety of opinions. 'This is bad and here's why' is at least as useful as 'this doesn't work for me and this is why'.

For context, Zak was advancing an argument that 'using rules is like having training wheels on your bike' which I think already qualifies as insulting, but it was also a bad analogy.  More importantly, Zak was trying to impose restrictions on how people are permitted to present their opinions.  Clearly trying to prevent him from controlling the rules of debate appears as an existential threat from his perspective.   

[Zak S]

No, Zak.  You're putting words in my mouth, again.  I claim you are an asshole. I don't accuse you of 'breaking a good faith argument'.

You claimed I want people to follow rules I don't follow.

So, anyway, you haven't proved that.

You provided a random conversation which doesn't prove that--but the only way you could even try to prove it is if you could give us the rest of the information you're refusing to give which is real easy:

just post the link to the first interaction you're aware of us having. Also if it doesn't show clearly how it lead to the conversation you posted, it'd help to do that, too.

Order of events is crucial to proving this kind of claim of wrongdoing.

Again: please give readers a link, (not a quote, which could be more easily faked and does not allow people to review the conversation) so interested parties can review the conversation.

[deadDMwalking]

No, Zak.  You're putting words in my mouth, again.  I claim you are an asshole. I don't accuse you of 'breaking a good faith argument'.

You claimed I want people to follow rules I don't follow.

No, Zak.  You're putting words in my mouth, again.  I claim you are an asshole. I don't accuse you of wanting people to follow rules you don't follow. 

That's an accusation. Quote me saying that.  Because I sure as hell didn't say that in anything I quoted.  Burden of proof, you know?  That thing you keep saying if you feel that someone has made an accusation against you, but doesn't apply when you make accusations against anyone else, apparently? 

So, anyway, you haven't proved that.

And just so we're clear, I won't be proving that.  That's a strawman position you've created to debunk.  I reiterate - I do not claim that you want people to follow rules that you don't use.  I have no idea how you got that idea, and I think that's a laughably stupid position, and I can only imagine you've chosen it because of how easy it is to dunk on.  My claim is that you're an asshole.  I have proved it. 

just post the link to the first interaction you're aware of us having. Also if it doesn't show clearly how it lead to the conversation you posted, it'd help to do that, too.

Zak, I just posted our first interaction.  You said 'rules are like training wheels'.  I said 'that's a bad analogy' and 'it's not fair to demand that people exhaustively detail their particular preferences in regard to everything in the world before they offer criticism.  As far as I can tell, you responded by bullying me (but I don't care about that). 

Again: please give readers a link, (not a quote, which could be more easily faked and does not allow people to review the conversation) so interested parties can review the conversation.

Sure Zak, I'll post a link, instead of constantly demanding that everyone else Google some string of words that MIGHT OR MIGHT NOT pull up any relevant data, but I'll point out, you're doing that thing that you do again - you know, maintaining a double standard that applies to everyone else but not you - and that's one reason you're an asshole. 

My First Post is on page 7

Again and still, while I encourage you to exhaustively review our interactions to see why people think you're an asshole, NOTHING IN THAT THREAD is actually RELEVANT.  Every proof that people need to see that you're an asshole is in THIS THREAD, here at theRPGsite - you know the one that has more than 60 pages of you being an asshole in exactly the ways people say that you're an asshole.  As far as I can tell, your only defenses are:

1) It's okay to be an asshole if someone else was an asshole first
2) Everyone who is not me was an asshole first

If those are NOT your defenses, please feel free to say so, but I don't consider EITHER of those to be a valid defense - especially when the premise of the argument is not 'you treat people badly' (even though you do) but is instead based on your specific actions when discussing things online which include (but are not limited to):

(1) setting impossibly high standards regarding clarity of language for others that you continually fail to meet yourself;
(2) insisting that if you have not been clear that anyone that doesn't understand you must exhaustively PRIVATELY interrogate you for a full understanding of additional information that you failed to disclose before posting any rebuttal while simultaneously insisting that you have fully understood the only possible position of your opponents without asking any clarifying questions at all;
(3) then attributing your 'opponent' a position that they do not hold and demanding that they provide extensive quotes to prove something only you've claimed;
(4) then claiming that your opponents are 'trolls' and therefore no discussion is EVEN POSSIBLE;
(5) but that you're here to 'set the record straight' and ignore any evidence brought up in support of a contrary position;
(6) and repeat ad nauseum. 

Fortunately for me, because you're an asshole, I'm not as tired of telling you that as I would have expected by this point. 

You are sorely mistaken if you think one or two comments you made a decade ago has garnered such deep-seated disdain for you and your online presence.  I am responding to an ONGOING PATTERN OF BEHAVIOR that I think is toxic, and is not directed at me.  I mean, you do it to me, too, but I don't care about that because I don't respect you.  If I know you're an asshole and you act like an asshole, that's just meeting my expectations.  It's when you're an ASSHOLE to people that DON'T know you that I think it's worth saying something.   

[Zak S]

No, Zak.  You're putting words in my mouth, again.  I claim you are an asshole. I don't accuse you of wanting people to follow rules you don't follow. 

You said above that I never had a good faith conversation. (I think, let's take a look:)

I don't accuse you of EVER HAVING PARTICIPATED in a good-faith argument. 

Since I say people should have good faith conversations (above on this page)--that's a rule they should follow.

So, yeah, you're claiming that.

As for your claim I did something bad.

You made an inaccurate statement in your first post:

'This is bad and here's why' is at least as useful as 'this doesn't work for me and this is why'.

To which I (since i engage in good faith conversations) replied..

"The first is confusing opinion for fact, the second is fact. The first is responsible for 90% of pointless monkey shitfights on the internet."

That was (according to your) our first exchange and I am looking at it now for the first time in a while.

So, we got:

Claim from you.

Counterclaim from me

You didn't address my counterclaim--either to agree or disagree. Ever.

I could be wrong and be missing a follow-up from you but it appears:

You didn't die or lose your internet and you kept talking afterwards (for example now) to me and other people without addressing my counterclaim.

So: that means you are a troll. It also means that I was perfectly nice to you and you chose to be dishonest and not address what I said.

If you addressed it somewhere, please let me know. But so far as I know, you completely blew off what I said and then went on with your life--not a good faith act.

[deadDMwalking]

Oh, Zak, I see what's happening.  You think that when you say something that it counts as 'rebutting'. 

This is a forum.  It's an ongoing conversation.  I am NOT OBLIGATED to address all of your so-called 'points'.  I assert that people do not need to exhaustively detail their wants, needs, preferences, and point of view before venturing an opinion.  I don't agree that 'The first is confusing opinion for fact, the second is fact. The first is responsible for 90% of pointless monkey shitfights on the internet.'  But ultimately, I don't CARE to disagree verbally.  I think my position is easily understood and since I'm not trying to convince you - only to state my position - there's no need to respond if you haven't said anything substantial, especially since it was in this case tangential to the larger discussion.  I also don't agree that failing to address every so-called 'point' automatically makes someone a troll.  Conversations move on, statements that might have been relevant on page 2 may not be relevant on page 64; people may have said what I would have said before (or better) than I did.  Group discussions have different rules than formal debate between two parties.  I think you'd be crazy to assert otherwise. 

But let me clear.  I am done talking about a conversation that happened almost a decade ago.  You seem to think it is relevant.  I don't..  Sure, it happens to be an example of you being an asshole.  From my perspective it happens to be the first time I engaged with you and came to realize you're an asshole.  While I think there's plenty of evidence to show that you were an asshole to me, I don't actually care about that.  The larger issue, and the only one I care about is that you are an asshole to EVERYONE.  As I said before, I'm a big-boy with a good situation.  I have a good job, I have a good marriage, I have a good family.  There are people who want to call you an asshole but when you start levying personal insults (as I've seen you do) some of those people might choose not to call you out on your bullshit because they anticipate the hurtful comments that you'll levy at them (some of which may be true, even if they shouldn't be insults).  For example, you've used virgin as an insult (and don't bother to deny it or ask for quotes - you know you) even though some of the people you're talking to could be 12 years old, male or female - you don't know!  I've said it before - the reason I want to be the one that calls you out as an asshole is because your normal insults don't phase me - they just don't land because they're not true.  Without doing exhaustive research, the fact that I've called you an asshole so many times in this post might seem like justification for you to be an asshole to me, and I'm absolutely fine with that. 

What I am not fine with is how you're an asshole to everyone, even when you're engaging with them the first time, even when they're here to defend you.  You are toxic Zak S., and it is ONLY because of YOUR ACTIONS.  Everyone deserves to be warned.  And if my comments here siphon time away from you being an asshole elsewhere BONUS.

[Zak S]

This is a forum.  It's an ongoing conversation.  I am NOT OBLIGATED to address all of your so-called 'points'.

Only if you want to claim your ideas are based on reason.

If you ware saying your ideas are not based in reason then just say that.

Failing to do either leaves us all with no legitimate reason for you to have said anything so you just wasted everyone's time.

[MeganovaStella]

This is a forum.  It's an ongoing conversation.  I am NOT OBLIGATED to address all of your so-called 'points'.

Only if you want to claim your ideas are based on reason.

If you ware saying your ideas are not based in reason then just say that.

Failing to do either leaves us all with no legitimate reason for you to have said anything so you just wasted everyone's time.

classic dumbass rationalist behavior- quote only one line of your opponent's post, then act condescendingly.