Being part of history adds glamour to our present era

I've always felt like, the past is mysterious and interesting, the future is mysterious and interesting, but the present, just happens to be a random time in which I live, and it is plain and non distinctive. It has no fancy puffy gowns or cool futuristic suits full of new gadgets.

But actually I realized something, which is self evident but is still not experienced as such - that in a way we also live in history. The events that take place now, the specific characteristics of this era will one day be studied by the future civilization. they will look at our art, at our current events, fundamental philosophy and ideas, and will classify them according to how they fit with everything else.

To them, our clothes will be a mysterious, cool and bizarre thing just as the 19th century gowns are to us.

It's not that we have to see the world through their eyes, it's that we can choose to look at our time as being unique among other times in history (both past and future, because the world *will* change).

And to me, that makes all the everyday things acquire a much grander meaning. We are both unique and part of a whole. And that means we can cherish ordinary things, even something like sidewalks or cars. There'd come a day when those will no longer exist in their current form. And we (and whatever other number of generations) are the only ones who get to experience them.

My summer project - update

The update is that nothing is moving much. I am pretty much stuck as to where to get the background image from, how to get a good model reference picture from, since it's nude and requires sunlight and other small things (such as where to get the fabric from, what wood panel side to get etc' but that is really a small issue).

I think once I have the background decided on I will be on the horse and ready to move forward. This lead me to the thought today of "just pick one and go with it even if it's not perfect". Not an easy thing to do for me. When it comes to art I am very picky. The Atelier beat it out of me a little bit. I get there early in the morning and draw what is there, like it or not and eventually I like the result even if partially. However, it doesn't work well when I see something in the subject I really like and this is a case when I like the subject.

Maybe I can do the figure alone and linger with the background so that I can start working. Yes... yes... It may end up making the composition slight less than perfect but this is a summer project and the summer only lasts so long. This is indeed what I should do!

So the plan is to look through more backgrounds today, to test the appearance of pure sunlight on the body (it may be too much and I'd have to change it to something more subtle somehow, like indirect sunlight).

OK, let's get moving!

The process of creating my summer painting

You can follow me in my steps to create my first imagination-reference painting from the first concept/sketch to its final stages which will hopefully be at the end of the summer.

In the past I have been painting from my head and didn't use references with an unsatisfying result. This is my first time trying to work with references to achieve what I have in mind.


It all started one night as I was sitting at my desk, doing whatever - I don't remember what, when I had this image in my head and I had to put it down. I grabbed a pen and a sticky note and scribbled the following:

Then, I stored the little note in a drawer and didn't think about it much for several months and meanwhile got ideas for several other paintings.

Then, as my year at the Atelier (a form of a private, small art school) came close to an end I started thinking of my summer project and had a hard time choosing one idea out of the 5 I had. I decided to just go with the first one, which is this one.

A while ago, after I created the sketch, I started thinking and trying to develop the concept for the painting - the background and the story behind it. I didn't want just the figure in an empty space. The idea of a naked woman carelessly adjusting her high heel shoes was appealing to me as part of some context from real life, and I wanted to find the right setting to place her in. The first thing that came to my mind was a shopping area. She is going shopping, naked, but without much attention to the fact of being naked, but as if she were dressed.

Now, the thing is, I don't know WHY I was to paint that or why it has such a positive emotion for me, but it does. I feel that it communicates something good about the world. How else can someone go shopping naked and worry about nothing more than adjusting their shoe? It must mean that they like their body, they like life, they like the sense of moving and the sun and wind on their skin and can care for nothing except for that fun. In real life, this feeling would only be possible as part of a dream, because.. you'd get arrested, you'd get pointed at and so on and that's not fun at all. But the scene is not going to have people in her immediate environment. There will be people, but they will be further away in the shopping center. Not enough for any sort of interaction, just enough to make the shopping center look natural.


Now I had 2 problems to solve: References for the background and for the model. I have the pose in mind fairly well, but not the background.
so I started Googling for shopping plaza images to get some ideas of what I'd like to have, what would work.
I looked at several, each with its own pros and cons. Here are a few of those images:

Then I realized I am getting too overwhelmed by the list that started forming of what I like and didn't like about each one and so I made a document with a list of requirements from the background.
I like the first image the most for its distance, high brightness, clarity of it being a shopping center without too many details. I didn't like the street separating the viewer from the mall, I prefer something more accessible and inviting to the viewer like a parking lot.
I want the background to show blue sky so that it is clear it is daytime - morning probably.

Now my problems are getting a model, finding a place where a model can be photographed in broad daylight without anyone seeing, finding the precise shopping place I'd use as a reference (I can't use the painting above because it belongs to someone else).
The model will likely be me, though not accurately me, but some idealized/ approximated version. (I better not receive any cheesy remarks about this).


More on the list: deciding the canvas size, getting a canvas, paints, workable lightning conditions, blah blah, it's trivial.

I'm going to make myself an organized schedule so I don't end up drifting away and put in the required time. It's easy to go do other things while running into difficulties and I want to avoid that.

I am going to use all the knowledge and experience I've gathered in my year at Georgetown Atelier. I've done nothing but draw the whole year; no color, no painting. I don't have a lot of experience doing that, but I feel fairy ripe for the task anyway.

Stay tuned for part 2 as my painting and preparation process progresses.

There must be an angel

"No one on earth could feel like this. I'm thrown and overblown with bliss" - probably my favorite line ever.

Insecurity masked as self-involvement

Today I heard perhaps the best example to illustrate this "thing", which some, or even many people do.

A father and son started a project, sending an HD camera to outer space and back. They achieved this (how incredibly cool!) and when they got the camera back they put the video up on youTube.
[No link or details for this from me this time, feel free to search it on youTube].

So, to the point I was making: In the comment section, some people replied "this is not HD! The quality is OK but not HD like they say it is."

Now, how on earth can someone have that to say as their one, only comment? Is this really the most important thing you could think of to comment on this magnificent and exciting adventure/ achievement? How about the fact that a normal regular family sent an object to outer space?

One has to wonder, what goes on in the minds of people who make comments of this type.

The problem is not the criticism, but the fact that the comment does not focus on the achievement, but on the knowledge of the commenter. It's as if, a scientist creates a device for instant transmission, something amazingly out of this world, and in the article he mentions he used a PC computer, and the reply people would have is: "Oh, I have a mac, it would have been so much better... In my opinion macs have superior processing power".
It's as if the only thing they are after is to pour down their knowledge in front of others - that is THE thing on their mind regardless of what they see or hear.

The softer version of this would be unrelated to knowledge yet still self involved.
Like if an artist would display a masterpiece of figure drawing and an observer would reply: "I'm almost as well built as this figure, I go to the gym 3 times a week you know".

What is it with these people? They seem pathologically self-involved.

What they have in common is a constant internal focus on their self-esteem, instead of focus on the world, on facts and specifically on other people's achievements when they cross their path. The world is viewed through a filter of "How does this relate to my self-esteem" rather than "what is the meaning of this to my life?/ what is the meaning of this?".


The same problem presents itself when these people are involved in some intellectual discussion. Their replies seems to revolve around what they know (whether or not it's the essence of the discussion or a very minor, unrelated point). It's never around facts and knowledge.
It's the sort that likes to "insert their opinion" even when they have no clue on the subject and no interest in inspecting the facts on which their opinion is suppose to rest.

I know from myself that if I ever go into a thinking mode of "how does this subject relate to my knowledge" vs. "what are the facts of this subject and how do they relate to my goals" that I am pursuing the subject for the wrong reason and that my vanity is involved rather than selfish, healthy pursuit of my goals.


Those other people are chronically insecure and they build their whole thinking as a wall to defend against their insecurity. Instead of a mind that performs its function of gaining knowledge and pursuing goals, the mind turns into a self-defense machine that sees the world not for what it is but for opportunities to prove self-worth and to defend from recognition of ignorance.

This is why, in seeing the video of the camera launched to outer space, the one thing they find appropriate to say is: "According to my expert knowledge on the subject, this is not HD".

Does Vacuum exert force on masses?

Vacuum appears to exert force on objects and molecules, since they immediately and powerfully move toward the vacuum once allowed. For example, a jar sealed with vacuum seems to pull the lid toward it, or pull air into it once the vacuum is released.

However, all that happens is molecules moving where they can move, where they have space to move into. In gas particles barely have any effect on one another (besides collisions, gravity or electric forces are negligible). All that happens when molecules move into a vacuum quickly is that the movement is in a single direction. Normally, in an average density space, particles move in all direction, creating an even pressure in all directions and a net 0 movement of the particles (more or less). However, with vacuum, every particle enters into it - nothing moves out of it, creating a very distinct sense of movement. In fact the empty space does not exert any force on the molecules - it is just normal movement except there is nothing to balance it.

What about the jar? How could I explain the fact that the lid sticks to the jar so powerfully if the vacuum exerts no actual physical force?
Like so: The lid is actually pushed by the particles outside the jar. The inside of the jar can simply offer nothing to balance it, which is why the lid is pushed onto the jar so powerfully.

Using guilt as a weapon and emotionalism

I saw this incident involving an online game (Farmville) and saw a few interesting components about it.

First I'll tell you what the incident was. The game involves operations where a few people set a goal and need to do their part to be able to achieve the goal in due time.
It takes effort on the part of each participant and if the goal is achieved, there is a reward at the end for all participants.

It is possible, under the way the co-op is built to join an operation, not do a thing and get a reward at the end if other people manage to complete the task on time.

OK, so now that we're done with the boring details, here is what happened:

Apparently, some people join those operations but do nothing to contribute to their success. They wait and see if others do enough to get the task done and then do other things.

In this specific incident, one player wrote a note to one of those exploiters asking them to quit the operation so that someone who IS going to get some work done can join.

Guess what the reply was? The "exploiter" posted a note on the Facebook wall (publicly visible) of the one who sent the note saying: "You asked me to quit so I did!".

Seems pretty simple, doesn't it? But it is actually complex and contains many interesting small elements.

For starters - this reply is unjust and dishonest. It is meant to punish the one who sent the note - to make them feel guilty - as if, if they felt guilty, it means the exploiter is off the hook for what they have done. The interesting component is that this is a good example of a second hander, but stunning, to me, in its depth.

Think about what it means - if the other person is made to feel guilt, then the other person is convinced that they were wrong about the case, therefore the exploiter can rest assured that they did nothing wrong because they rely entirely on the judgment of the other person's mind.
Notice that there is no reference to facts, no independent judgment - just an attempt to change the mind of someone else so that, in turn, one's mind can become convinced of the same thing. Insane, isn't it?

Secondly, I find it interesting that the exploiter's state of mind is entirely emotional, bearing very little rational structure. They received a note blaming them for something - the facts of what they are being blamed for do not register in their mind and do not matter. What they do register is that they are being blamed and that makes them feel bad. They then decide to shift the burden of that negative feelings to someone else, as if feelings can be poured from one soul to another. Using ideas is just a tool. In this case, the idea is that the person who sent the note has taken an action against someone and that this, by itself, is suppose to be bad.
Does the exploiter actually believe in such an idea? No - they obviously take actions against other people without any shame or inhibition. The idea here is used carelessly, without any thought, without any understanding that ideas matter. The exploiter felt something bad, and took whatever random action their subconscious could gather up to shift the emotion to someone else.

This guilt trick is very common: Someone judges you badly? Make them feel guilty for it, and, like magic, the blame is gone. Facts of the case? Who cares! Just work to change the content of the mind of the accuser and that would be enough.

It is a good indication of a mind of a second hander - a mind who relies on the judgment of others for its own certainty and ideas.


Another common thing people do is to be emotionalists. Now what does that mean? Obviously, ?I am not going out against emotions as such, nor against the pursuit of pleasurable emotions. The question here is not the goal but the means.

Pursuing pleasure by following every urge and every feeling one happens to have is not going to make one happy. Nor does this means that life consists of a constant struggle to suppress one's emotions that stand in the way of reason.
Without going into the details of what is ideal - here is one thing which is not ideal - what many people are doing, of which this exploiter lady is a good example.

Her emotions mean everything to her. She follows them blindly, with complete servitude. In her mind there is no room for facts or ideas, only for satisfaction of her emotions. Ideas in her mind have no relation to facts and should have no relation to facts - they are mere tools to achieve satisfaction of emotions.
So if insulting someone else (justly or unjustly, hypocritically or not) works to shift her emotions - there is no hesitation - she will do it.
This is an incredible mentality. I am very curious to know how this sort of mentality can develop. I have seen, at times, elements of something like that in myself, as a child - so I can understand it to some extent. But a mind devoted entirely to satisfaction of emotions bypassing rational judgment? That is fantastically bizarre.
One day I will discover how this sort of mentality comes to dominate a person's psychology. I'm guessing it involves some laziness as a child and after enough time it become automatized enough that the person does not even recognize anymore what is motivating them nor their departure from reality. All they know is their emotions.
There is more to understand about this.

The last interesting element is the use of emotions as a replacement of ideas. This is the least visible elements of the three elements involved in this case.

One element is the emotionalism of this woman (what motivated her action).
The second element is the second hand judgment (relying on someone else's judgment to substitute it for one's own) - however, there is yet another thing hidden here, which is: She was not going directly after this guy's judgment. Instead, she was going after his emotion. If she could get him to feel guilty, it would be as if he had judged her to be good.
People are not generally aware that there is a tie between emotion and ideas, but here is a case that shows it well. This guy feeling guilty in general could not be of any interest to her. She wanted him to feel guilt about THIS CASE. Now why? The reason is that the feeling of guilt indicates a judgment. What she was really after was his judgment, not his feeling - the feeling is simply an indication of a subconscious judgment.

OK, that concludes my thoughts about this.

Feel free to leave your comments below and let me know what you think.

Worshiping of negative emotions

You know you're a philosopher when... you analyze a commercial for its philosophical elements.

For example, this commercial for Vlasic pickles:



I like this commercial, because it shows negative emotions as a source of amusement.

The opposite approach magnifies negative emotions into a scary giant which must not be mentioned at all in any form - it's the approach people showed when they called the Glenn Beck show complaining about frog abuse or the approach I'm sure some people show when they called "animal cruelty!" about the making of this commercial which involved... scaring a cat.
It's a very common approach these days - that negative emotions are important and should take a major role in human interactions (be avoided at all cost).
This social climate makes this commercial a little gem - a reminder of good old fashioned American spirit, under which a little pain is nothing to worry about or pay attention to. Nowadays, a little pain is what we're told we should pay all our attention to, feel guilty about and avoid at all cost. Don't startle, don't insult, don't upset anyone, don't judge.

The philosophical foundation of the commercial is the benevolent universe premise. The opposite - the worship of negative emotions is based on a malevolent universe premise (a term coined by Ayn Rand).

It is based on a view that human beings are not strong, but fragile - that they are not naturally happy, rather they are victims - and that by making the slightest joke, as friendly as it is at their expense, one is committing a terrible crime of attempting to break their spirit.
We are expected to treat each other as if we were all weak victims and made to feel guilty of being a monster if we treat people as strong and happy - as capable of enjoying a friendly joke at their expense (I emphasize friendly).

So, no, this commercial did not say all of this, but it represents this approach, or rather, can be classified under the good approach.


Here are a few cases to illustrate my point:

In college, I decided, one day, to share my sense of humor with my roommate. We were in the kitchen between classes when she started telling me about a certain vegetable and where it grows or something of the sort. It was so boring that I zoned out. I decided that she would find it funny too that I zoned out since the topic was a vegetable, so I told her with a smile that I dozed off. She was so offended she nearly stated crying - she locked herself in the room and would not talk to me for at least a week.
What the hell makes a person fragile to the degree of taking offense on account of a vegetable story? I find it hard to understand. But it is cases like these that make it hard to treat people as strong and independent, that drive people to consider every word they say and honesty on the large out of fear of upsetting someone.

I met my best friend in college in a story entirely opposite to this incident.
We were both undergoing a check by a security guard while we were entering a train station. We had to show our IDs. The guard took specially long time looking at my friend's before letting him in. I made a joke to him that it must be a pretty ugly picture to require so long to decide whether or not he's a security threat.
He laughed and continued talking to me.
I can't imagine how my college roommate would have reacted to such a joke.


Education today seems to be the same. Teachers try to build self esteem in kids by saving them the need to face making errors.
This approach is the same because it views kids as fragile, as unable to deal with failure - since failure is seen as big, as huge and threatening, and kids must be shielded from it.
This, of course, achieves the opposite result - it teaches kids that the proper way to view mistakes is not as something small to correct, but as something big to avoid and fear. Since making mistakes is a normal part of life and of learning - this turns these kids into fragile, unconfident people - the exact opposite of what this approach was suppose to achieve.

A word of clarification before I finish: I do not mean to imply that negative emotions are insignificant or should be ignored or viewed as insignificant. It is important for psychological health to know why one feels what one feels - be it a pleasurable or a painful emotion.
But to view negative emotions as powerful metaphysically (by their very nature) is to view people as fragile by their very nature, and that is what I am against.

Who is the hero - Lois Lane or Superman?

Lois Lane is a determined reporter, acting daily to be the best reporter she can be.
She exposes crime and corruption, sometimes risking her life to do so.
Her work helps some people, but she is primarily working for herself. She takes great pride in doing her job well which is what keeps her going.

Superman does what he does for free. He considers it a bad taste to request money for helping people. What he does saves many lives.
Superman refuses to take any pride in what he does. "This is what every decent person would have done, it's nothing". However, when the streets are clean of crime (this happens in one episode of the second season of Lois and Clark), superman looses his sense of self-esteem, hanging around high school kids to help them with their baseball game just to feel that someone needs him.

Lois Lane's happiness and self-esteem come from her job. Superman's happiness and self-esteem come from being able to help someone in trouble.


A business offering service to aid in disasters has the same focus as Lois Lane has - how to improve their business, how to offer a faster, better service - how to offer such a great service that they get more costumers and make more money.
Like Lois, they derive pleasure from being a good business and their focus in on their own product - not primarily on the trouble of other people.

Superman is suppose to be an ideal - a hero we would all admire and aspire to be. But I think Lois Lane and the insurance company I described are the real heroes.

Superman is a product of an altruistic morality, a morality that teaches people that their only source of self esteem (unadmittedly) depends on the misery of others, on helping the sick and needy. It creates a disgusting, modest kind of empty character.

This is the character that's suppose to stand for "Truth, Justice and the American way". Well, truth and justice - that's fine, but the American way is not to give stuff for free. The American way IS about making a fortune, succeeding in the world - not being a sucker for hire, apologizing for the option of taking pride in what one does for a living. No sir, that is not the American spirit, though it may have become so over the years under the influence of Christianity.


I think Lois Lane is the real star of the show - a person of character and determination - superman is a modest bore in a suit.

I think the creation of Superman is evidence for the idea that there is no glory in the life of ordinary people. That being a man holds no potential for greatness. But take something that can fly and lift up buildings and we have something to talk about.

Nah, I'd look at those who can erect buildings the old fashion way any time over the one who can do it as easily as he can breath. That's where the real glory is.

The meaning of "Percent"

We need the concept of percent because we need a convenient way to measure the size (or amount) or one thing compared to another basic amount. For example, if you are selling apples and you want to know how well you did in a particular year, you need to measure your success compared to how much demand there was for apples in that year.
If the market had 100 people looking to buy apples and 30 of them picked your apples, your success was 30% of the market. If, however, there were 10,000 people looking to buy apples and only 30 of them bought yours, your success was only 0.3% - much lower, which means that there could be a problem with your apples or with the way you are selling them.
This shows that the number 30 (30 apples sold) is not significant by itself to measure performance. Performance is measured by percent - by how one amount is compared to another one (in this case, the amount of apples sold vs. the amount of people looking to buy apples).

Another example is if you are opening a business with a few partners and you want to divide the profits. Suppose you decide that the right way to divide the profits is 50%-25%-25%. Suppose one month you got paid $1000 - is this your fair share or not? The only way to know is to measure this compared to the overall profits in that month. If the profit was $2000 you got 50% which is your share, but if the profit was $10,000 then you deserve more. Again the significant number here is a numerical relation between one amount to the other.


Percent, mathematically, is a conversion of units of measurements. Knowing that you got 16/123 of the profit contains the exact same information as knowing that you got 13% of the profit, yet 16/123 is not an amount we can easily concretize in our head - not a number we can easily relate to. To make sense of it, we would need to see how it stands in relation to something more familiar, like one half, one third, a decimal number or a percent.
Is there something inherit about the base of 123 that makes it hard to measure things like 16/123? Not really. Had we measured percent with a base of 123, the number 16 would have been far easier to concretize (connect to an actual amount of objects in reality) than the corresponding amount (13, in this case) had the base been a 100.
The amount of 100 is easier to handle since we count in tens, but the main reason it is easier to grasp the meaning of 13/100 than 16/123 is because using 100 units as the whole is far more concretized for us - due to extensive use in daily life.

One can see this phenomenon by the need of Americans to convert kilometers to miles to get a sense of the distance and of Europeans to convert miles to kilometers for the same purpose.
There is nothing special about the length of one kilometer or one mile except that one gets a sense of their length by repeatedly using those units and getting a sense of their physical meaning in reality.


When calculating what is the percent of something, what we do is to ask the following question: Given that we have X units from type Y - how many units would we have had we converted the measurement unit into one of a hundred?

For example, suppose we have 15 seconds out of a minute - the basic measurement unit is 1/60. Asking what percent 15 seconds are from one minute is the same as asking - if a minute were composed of 100 units of time, how many units would we have to take to equal the time duration of 15 seconds?

15             ?
__     =     __
60           100


The question mark is the percent (the percent 15 seconds are out of a whole minute).

So, in conclusion, percentage is a measurement of the size relation of one amount to another, represented in a unit base of 1/100 (in which the whole is 100 units).

"Civil discussion" rules on online forums are counter-productive

This common rule restricts users from engaging in "personal attacks" or "personal insults".

Seeing how some people turn intellectual discussions into a king of the jungle war - one might think this rule is a good solution.
I think it's not and here is why:

If a law came to pass forbidding the use of weapons - what do you suppose would happen? Criminals would still get weapons, illegally (since they, by definition, do not care about the law, but about getting away with disobeying it) and the police would not be able to use weapons to combat crime, since they DO hold themselves up to the law.

Crime would be unstoppable.

This applies equally to discussions. Words carry power with them - the power of ideas, knowledge - which result in behavior. Words, when the situation calls for it, ARE weapons - intellectual weapon against intellectual criminals.
When one is not allowed to use them against those criminals, the result is the same as in the case of physical weapons.


To illustrate my point, consider the following examples:

Someone posts the following: "Hi guys! I am really upset. X told me that I am cheating by doing Y! I am so angry. I only do Y occasionally, so how dare he accuse me of doing it?! To fight this injustice I have asked all my friends to stop associating themselves with him to teach him a lesson!"

The appropriate response to this person is by saying explicitly that they are dishonest and unjust. However, the "no personal insults" rule kicks in to achieve its goal of a "civilized discussion". No one is allowed to tell this person that they are dishonest. At best, people can say something like: "I don't think what you did is right"/ "I don't think this guy deserved what you did".
This gives the original poster appearance of rationality and honesty since such replies make it seem like the original poster made a mistake of judgment. The replies focus on whether or not such "judgment" was mistaken. The truth is, the original poster used no judgment at all - they used evasion and were thoroughly dishonest both in the actions they reported and in their reason for posting.

This "civil discussion" rule gives them the safety of posting any kind of dishonest act without being called on the immorality of their mental process.


How about this example: Two people are discussing a topic. One of them brings facts, arguments and logical analysis of the topic at hand and of the other side's viewpoint. The other side, however, replies without any attempt to digest what is being said to them - they barely even read what is said - all they are looking for is how to prove they are right, but without relation to the facts or arguments presented to them.
This type of debate is very common, yet the "no personal insults" rule forbids anyone from calling someone else on doing this.
Instead the rational side has to either quit the discussion quietly, or continue it AS IF they were talking to a thinking person (in the context of the discussion).

Having to absorb the intellectual corruption of someone else to try to translate it, in replies, into an appearance of an honest intellectual process is damaging to the honest person's psychology because it instills a habit of self-imposed deceit about the nature of corruption (e.g. "X is not dishonest, they are just misjudging", "X is not trying to secretly insult me, they are simply judging me wrongly", "X is not a non-thinking, self-made idiot, they just don't know enough about this subject" and so on).


Again, the corrupt intellectual behavior goes uncalled and unchallenged - and therefore, safe and secure, while the rational side is left to quietly carry the burden of the intellectual corruption of the other side. This tends to chase good people away from those forums or discourage them from engaging in an intellectual discussion.

The result is that it is very difficult to find people willing to think and discuss topics in online forums devoted to intellectual discussions. The good guys give up after a short while and the bad guys stay and enjoy the freedom to do whatever they want. If someone insults them in any way by calling on what they are doing, all they have to do is call a moderator to protect them.


It is important to make the distinction between those whose main goal in a discussion is to "appear right" and insult the other participants as a tactic of achieving this end, vs. those who pronounce honest criticism of the one they are having a discussion with.
The "no personal insults" rule fails to make this distinction; before this rule, policemen and criminals are nothing more than men with guns, which need to be equally penalized for it.

Ad-hominem is a symptom of irrationality, not an essential, just as the problem with promiscuity is lack of spiritual values - not the amount of sex, or the problem with hateful people is their irrationality, not the emotion of hate.

To come up with a good set of rules one must go through a process of induction to identify the essential characteristics of rational vs. irrational behavior. Only rules based on identifying the essentials of proper intellectual discussion will do to create a good environment for rational, prosperous, discussions.