Conversation with Paul Cooijmans on the Electronic Mail Forum: Administrator, Glia Society (5)

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): In-Sight: Independent Interview-Based Journal

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2022/02/08

Abstract

Paul Cooijmans is an Independent Psychometitor and Administrator of the Glia Society, and Administrator of the Giga Society. He discusses: the themes within the Glia Society’s electronic mail forum; words, topics, and writing styles seem less frequent in the electronic mail forum than if the cognitive rarity was much lower; communication; “rudeness” “forbidden” from the Glia Society’s electronic mail forum; “personal attacks” “forbidden” from the Glia Society’s electronic mail forum; the perspective of a long-term administrator of a high-IQ society; “no taboo topics” existing and “absolute freedom of speech” as a value; a high-IQ society’s intellectual ‘atmosphere’; punishing “missbehavers”; temporarily removed from the electronic mail forum; permanently removed from the electronic mail forum; subject lines; contributors or participants try to hide their identities; a common confusion or mistake; the motivations for some members ‘repeating their point’ ad nauseam; rule ignored by the Glia Society electronic mail forum participants; challenging “the rules of the forum on the forum itself”; kind remarks; and the successes and failures of the Glia Society electronic mail forum.

Keywords: absolute freedom of speech, electronic mail forum, fora, Glia Society, Paul Cooijmans.

Conversation with Paul Cooijmans on the Electronic Mail Forum: Administrator, Glia Society (5)

*Please see the footnotes, bibliography, and citation style listing after the interview.*

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: We’re back. My fault for the delay – apology. To continue from “Conversation with Paul Cooijmans on Introduction to the Glia Society: Administrator, Glia Society (1),” “Conversation with Paul Cooijmans on Censorship, Freedom of Speech, High-IQ Societies, Moles and Wolves, Cultural Marxism, and “Thoth”: Administrator, Glia Society (2),” “Conversation with Paul Cooijmans on Community Dynamics, Heterogeneous and Homogeneous Tests, and Qualification: Administrator, Glia Society (3),” and “Conversation with Paul Cooijmans on Glia Society, Games, Tests, Puzzles, Thoth, Policy, and Absolute Freedom of Speech: Administrator, Glia Society (4),” on the Glia Society, you have electronic mail forum rules. This may be tedious (bear with me, please and thank you), as an educational effort. It is “open only to the society’s members” (n.d.). What have been the themes within the Glia Society’s electronic mail forum amongst the member-only forum? 

Paul Cooijmans[1],[2]*: So this is about electronic mail forum, not the several other fora that exist nowadays on various “social media”. I first want to say that most of the communication now takes place on those other fora, and the electronic mail forum is not very active. Messages to it are often announcements of new tests, contests around tests or puzzles, or events of some kind. I also announce the society’s journal issues on this forum.

Jacobsen: With the cognitive rarity of the Glia Society, what words, topics, and writing styles seem less frequent in the electronic mail forum than if the cognitive rarity was much lower?

Cooijmans: Football (soccer) is the first that occurs to me regarding this question, and also the use of so-called four-letter words (if they read this, some may at once want to start using exactly those words and that topic to “disprove” me, but that does not count). Having said that, I remember that a Netherlandic member of another society, with a pass level at the 98th centile, used to say that “football, booze, and women” were his main interests. This person died some years ago. He is the one who robbed a casino in the 1990s, I may have mentioned that before here or there.

Jacobsen: How frequent is communication on the Glia Society’s electronic mail forum?

Cooijmans: Lately there have been six messages a month on average.

Jacobsen: Why is “rudeness” “forbidden” from the Glia Society’s electronic mail forum (Ibid.)?

Cooijmans: Because people of higher quality do not seem to like rudeness and will leave a forum if rudeness is frequently employed. What remains is the scum. The forum turns into a gutter. Instructive in this respect is that one of the rude members once asked, “Why do you not form two fora, one with very strict rules for the boring civilized people, and one without rules, for the rest of us?” Of course this idea was highly mistaken, as civilized forum participants do not require rules at all; they behave well by themselves. It is the rude ones that need rules, and need enforcement thereof because they are always breaking them, if only on purpose to provoke their removal. So, strict rules would only be needed on the second forum variant.

Jacobsen: Why are “personal attacks” “forbidden” from the Glia Society’s electronic mail forum (Ibid.)?

Cooijmans: Basically the same answer as to the previous question applies. Also, “argumentum ad hominem” is a notorious logical fallacy, and so persistent that it is no luxury to address it formally in forum rules.

Jacobsen: From the perspective of a long-term administrator of a high-IQ society, what happens in fora when “lies, insults, putting words into another’s mouth, slander, character assassination, crime, or any other type of misbehaviour” (Ibid.) are present or excused?

Cooijmans: Exactly as said a few questions ago: The people of higher quality leave, and the scum remains. The forum becomes a gutter. Once, a past forum moderator of the Glia Society abandoned a forum completely for that reason and started another one, and again later he even deleted an entire forum without prior notice. For clarity, fora in the society have almost always been started and administrated by members other than I myself. I am somewhat of a late adopter of new technology, I still do not have a mobile “smart telephone” for instance, or even a flat-screen television apparatus.

Jacobsen: With “no taboo topics” existing and “absolute freedom of speech” as a value, what have been the reactions to controversial subject matter in the fora?

Cooijmans: Not much, as members do not make a lot of use of their freedom in this regard, in my perception. In an earlier interview I already mentioned a discussion that arose after a member published in the journal Thoth material that some saw as portraying “violence against women”, so I will not repeat that here. Lately some slight controversy occurred around members showing self-made test items, waiting for people to send answers, and then making known the solution. A problem is that such items may resemble actual test items, and that thus existing tests may be made easier to solve. This is an annoying matter that keeps coming back, and it is disappointing that some people lack the discretion to sense that their material may be damaging existing tests. If you forbid such publishing of self-made items completely, this seems like a hard and rigid measure to some; but if you allow it, others complain that you are too soft and are letting them destroy your work before your eyes.

What makes it worse is that if you even mention that such material may help candidates to solve tests, this in itself will draw people’s attention to those forum threads and they will study them to gain an advantage. I fear that matters like this will remain a recurring theme in my life; I am so naive, so the opposite of paranoid, that I tend to realize only years or decades afterwards that people have been fooling around with me at some point.

Jacobsen: How does the existence of “no taboo topics” and “absolute freedom of speech” enrich a high-IQ society’s intellectual ‘atmosphere’ (Ibid.)?

Cooijmans: I must say I have always been amazed how little appreciation people have for their freedom. It seems many do not care much about the limited freedom of speech in society in general. So for those, this freedom does not enrich the atmosphere in an I.Q. society a whole lot. I reckon part of this is that intellectuals are relatively often cultural Marxists, and thus are at “the other side” when it comes to freedom; they are themselves the curtailers of it.

Another problem is that there are traitors within the high-I.Q. community who may bring any sensitive uttering of a member to the outer world in hours, despite the prohibition to do such. So sadly, I can not guarantee the safety of anyone making use of one’s freedom of speech. And this is not paranoia; it has happened once or twice that a non-member was discussed in a members-only forum and that this individual contacted me soon thereafter, fully aware of what had been said. I have never found out who did this; these cowards hide in ambush and commit their treason in silence. It is important for them to know that I desire their demises to be slow and painful, and that I entertain a diverse collection of objects both blunt and sharp to this end.

Jacobsen: Why is punishing “missbehavers” important alongside “no taboo topics” and “absolute freedom of speech” (Ibid.)?

Cooijmans: Again, an important reason is that good people will leave if bad people are allowed to have their way unpunished, and then you are left with an all-bad group. This is always a risk for a naive, good-natured person like I am. If you are kind to the bad, you are cruel to the good. Softness on crime is cruel, death penalty the epitome of humaneness.

An early illustration of this phenomenon took place in my primary school days, when there were periods when only the naughtiest boy of the village wanted to play with me and all other children avoided me because of the company I was in; a company that I tolerated in my naivety and kindness, which were of course taken advantage of by this person. I remember that the teacher, in such a period, once stated in class, “They that touch pitch will be defiled”, looking at me. These periods were interrupted when this boy was away, interned in some special school or youth prison; this was actually the case most of the time.

Jacobsen: How many Glia Society members have been temporarily removed from the electronic mail forum?

Cooijmans: I have not kept count, also because the forum was often administrated by others than I so I did not know about the removals, but I suspect it is in the order of five to ten.

Jacobsen: How many Glia Society members have been permanently removed from the electronic mail forum?

Cooijmans: See the previous answer; I am certain it is less than five.

Jacobsen: You give the reasoning for the rule of only quoting the passage(s) for response and no more.[3] On new topics, Glia Society members should “change the subject line to reflect the new topic” (Ibid.). What confusions happen when subject lines are not changed for a new topic introduction?

Cooijmans: Well, obviously the subject line does not reflect the contents of the message then, and recipients can not decide whether or not to read the message based on its subject line, and are thus forced to potentially waste time by opening it.

Jacobsen: You stated, “It must be possible to identify you from your entry in the member list of the forum. If you use a non-telling e-mail address while withholding your name, you must put your name under every message sent to the forum so that other members know who you are, and also see to it that the non-telling address is mentioned in your member information for the official Glia Society member list (that is, in the information you enter in the Registration form).” (Ibid.) How often do forum contributors or participants try to hide their identities?

Cooijmans: Too often. There are always one or two such cases current, and it is surprisingly hard to make them understand what they are doing wrong. When such a person is contacted and alerted to the fact that the person can not be identified as a member, the response is almost invariably like, “Oh, but you know me! I am [this or that person]”. And then they act as if the problem is solved. But it is not, because all other members can still not identify the person by comparing the person’s forum name to the member list. One then one has to painstakingly explain that either the member list entry or the forum name will need to be adapted to make them match and identification possible; bizarrely, this fails in almost all cases. These people appear unable to understand that privately telling one person who they are does not help others to know who they are. They can not understand that not everyone knows magically to which identity their non-telling forum name corresponds. They can not “curl back on themselves”, can not understand self-reference, have no associative horizon of significance. In fact I do not remember one single case where the person indeed adapted either forum name or member list entry. Such people are then either removed from the forum or the case lingers on for some more time with only the forum inspector privately knowing who they are.

A related problem is that of people registering with the candidate registration form to take a test and then later submitting answers anonymously or under another name. When I then ask them to state who they are so that I can identify them against the earlier test registration entry, they tend to be surprised: “But I already submitted the registration form! You already have my information!?” They can not understand that without also stating their identity when sending answers it is not possible to CONNECT them to the earlier information, which is why all tests, in the instructions section, explicitly and emphatically ask to provide name, age, sex, and electronic mail address when submitting answers. Especially age is often left out, in about half of the submissions. People think that providing their date of birth one time suffices, and do not comprehend that mentioning their age with every submission helps to identify them AGAINST the already registered information.

I learnt these things the hard way; in the old days, it would happen that a test was taken by, say for example, a Miranda de la Hoya. Later on, a candidate named Vera Cardinal took the test. Again later, Miranda Cardinal gave it a shot. Then, Veracruz de la Jolla showed up. Finally, years later, Miranda Veracruz de la Jolla Cardinal came along and the four entries could be fused. Thus, they create multiple entries in the database and trick you into retests. That is why it is needed to identify oneself with every test submission against the existing registration; to prevent multiple entries and retests. Very occasionally, I still find such entries and fuse them.

Of course, sometimes one can guess who the anonymous or pseudonymous person is; but it is tricky to rely on the accuracy of such a guess because a painful violation of the third person’s privacy is the result in case one’s guess is off: Ah, John Smith from South-East Utopia, is it not? Good to hear from you again! How are the haemorrhoids doing? And do you still have that little hooker in the freezer you brutally slaughtered last year?

Imagine how the privacy of poor John would be violated if the anonymous person turned out to be someone else after all!

Incidentally, the two names I just gave are fictitious examples. There is absolutely no need to go looking for them.

Jacobsen: You stated, “If you have a private question to a particular person, ask it in a private message to that person, not in a message to the forum.” (Ibid.) Is this a common confusion or mistake by forum contributors or participants?

Cooijmans: In my perception it is still relatively common, like a few times per year. This mistake originates in the early days of electronic mail fora, over twenty years ago, but has not gone away.

Jacobsen: What seem like the motivations for some members ‘repeating their point’ ad nauseam other than “having the last word,” if any? (Ibid.)

Cooijmans: Stubbornness, and the phenomenon of “seizing the moral high ground” and thus granting oneself the right to reprove the other party without ethical or social constraints. These people think, “I am right and the other party is so wrong that anything is allowed and I do not need to be reasonable, ethical, or provide rational arguments”.

Jacobsen: On objective truth and subjective statements, you comprehensively and clearly state:

Words like “truth” and “true” are reserved for information that is objective, factual, proven, absolute, independent of individual perception. Truth is by definition that which does not differ between individuals. For information that is subjective, opinionative, suspected, relative, dependent on individual perception, use words like “opinion”, “view”, or “perception”. For instance, do not say “One person’s truth is not the same as another person’s truth”, or “Truth is subjective”; such rhetorical contradictions in terms erode the word “truth” and confuse meanings of words. Instead, say “One person’s opinion is not the same as another person’s opinion”, or “Truth does not exist; only personal views exist”. This rule in no way curtails what can be said; it merely forces one to think and formulate clearly and consistently, and as such it helps to see possible errors in one’s thinking. Also note that who makes the claim of “Truth does not exist” (or anything equivalent to it) therewith disclaims one’s right to state that anything is or is not true, or to make any assertion at all, as such would constitute self-contradiction. (Ibid.)

How often is this rule ignored by the Glia Society electronic mail forum participants?

Cooijmans: Rarely any more. The quality of the participants has risen considerably over the years, and in my view this is a result of (1) sanctions against misbehavers, (2) a sound admission policy with ongoing attention to the functioning of the accepted tests, and (3) the influx of younger generations of members, who appear less affected by neo-Marxist doctrines like “truth does not exist” and “the effect of communication is more important than whether or not the communicated is true”. The last factor (3) may have to do with growing up with the Internet and therefore being exposed to information other than that from the educational system and the mainstream media, both of which are under stringent Marxist control.

Jacobsen: On challenging “the rules of the forum on the forum itself,” has this happened, too? (Ibid.) If so, how often?

Cooijmans: In the past this happened a lot, and that was the reason to instate this rule. Ever since, it has occurred hardly ever.

Jacobsen: You have some “remarks,” too, as follows:

In case one does not wholeheartedly agree with and applaud these rules, one is free to leave the forum and choose other ways of communicating with members; please do that rather than to challenge the rules of this forum;

For further study into civilized forum behaviour, see the excellent and highly recommendable free course “How to participate in an e-mail forum”;

For deeper discussion of a specific topic, general fora like the present one are not ideal, and one is free to start a thematic discussion or activity group devoted to that topic, for which some guidelines are in the relevant document in the members-only web location, in the section “Courses, self-study materials, instructional materials”. (Ibid.)

As usual from you, the remarks are reasonable. What have been the disagreements with the kind remarks if any?

Cooijmans: I do not remember any disagreements with this.

Jacobsen: Finally, what have been the successes and failures of the Glia Society electronic mail forum?

Cooijmans: Successes: In some periods, it has served as a medium for discussion between members, and it has always been useful for announcements. Failures: Because of the tendency of negative behaviour to rise to the surface in an “easy” medium such as electronic mail (like scum floating on water) combined with the tendency of good people to withdraw in the presence of negativity, the atmosphere in the forum has sometimes scared off new members. A tragic example of this occurred when a new member once introduced herself, and one of the forum trolls replied something like, “This forum is dead, [name of new member]. Go away”. The new member was never heard of again. I have to admit, you can make rules against misbehaviour until you weigh an ounce, but there is no way to prevent one hundred percent deliberate sabotage like that.

References

Cooijmans, P. (n.d.). The Glia Society: Electronic mail forum rules. Retrieved from https://gliasociety.org/forum_rules.html.

Appendix I: Footnotes

[1] Administrator, Giga Society; Administrator, Glia Society.

[2] Individual Publication Date: February 8, 2022: http://www.in-sightjournal.com/cooijmans-4; Full Issue Publication Date: May 1, 2022: https://in-sightjournal.com/insight-issues/.

[3] “The Glia Society: Electronic mail forum rules” states:

When replying to a message, quote only the passage or passages you are responding to and delete the rest, otherwise the full original message (and anything anyone adds to it) is repeated in all subsequent responses, causing unneeded use of bandwidth and energy, exhaust of harmful gasses into the atmosphere, and annoyance, and resulting in the freight-train-length messages consisting for 99.9 % of layers upon layers of quotations of quotations of quotations of… which we all hate so much. Especially, do not leave in an entire previous message that in itself contains one or more quotations. The latter specification of this rule can in no case be evaded with the defence “I was responding to the entire message”, as that would render this obviously necessary rule powerless.

See Cooijmans (n.d.).

*High range testing (HRT) should be taken with honest skepticism grounded in the limited empirical development of the field at present, even in spite of honest and sincere efforts. If a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.

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