What’s in a name?

I too chose my name because it's my name.

Reply to Michael Perhaps we are not imaginative enough to come up with something more inventive.

I suppose that there are those who seek anonymity by choosing a nom de plume. Perhaps they are uncomfortable with having their statements associated with themselves.

Then there are those that seem to choose a name associated with some desired attribute, or a philosopher that they perhaps aspire to emulate. Perhaps they are uncomfortable in being themselves, and wish to borrow the mana of another.

Me, I know I know nothing, and therefore my only direction is to decrease my ignorance. I assume my ideas are probably wrong, and I wish to be criticised, for only through such critique, can I find where the value of my ideas sits in the world of ideas. Only I can be me.

No, I am not egoistic.
I is just a phrase I have to repeat often in my job.

Reply to Roy Davies

Noble Dust is an album I made about 10 years ago; it's a phrase that to me at the time represented the dichotomy of mortality (Dust) vs. the inherent value of human life (Noble). Over the years its just become my go-to moniker wherever I happen to land on the internet; I don't think about it much when I use it.

Quoting Roy Davies

I chose a name coming into the forum that represents me - it is my name, and I’m not trying to project anything other than who I really am.

Ditto, although I use a simple contraction I like. My moniker was well known on a popular climbing forum before it vanished. My feeling is that we all reveal who we are, or provide easy clues one might follow to find out. Why hide behind an obscure avatar?

I named myself after an exploded Klingon moon because, well, to be honest, I’m a raging nerd.

The first time I joined an online discussion forum of any kind was back in early 2003 (which is now defunct and predecessor to this one). Then a newbee to blog-like public discussions & arguments with faceless strangers too, I deliberately chose a nom de guerr for its mask-like distancing from (and, not often enough, above) the fray, to remind myself to always try to present my views impersonally (which, also, failed too often) by "speaking" through an alter-ego like e.g. Plato's Socrates, Voltaire's Candide, Hume's Philo, Nietzsche's Zarathustra, or Camus' Sisyphus/Meursault. As best as I can recall, an 'impersonal voice' (somewhere between Spinoza and Beckett) was the inspiration ...

So the particular "moniker" 180 Proof came about off the cuff and tongue-in-chief connoting both 'almost pure' alcohol (90% - very combustible!) and 'reversible' (absurd I suppose), which more and more suited my online critical-dialectical 'career' as a self-appointed pro bono "cult deprogramner" (contra bible/quran/WOO-thumping) ...
[quote=Benny Spinoza]I do not know how to teach philosophy without becoming a disturber of established religion.[/quote]
... and "philosophical rodeo clown" (contra trollish bullshit & charlatanry/sophistry). I haven't ever given this 'persona' as such much thought; but there it is, my ironizing masquerade.

No doubt, the personal being philosophical, 'the real me' is also expressed through many thousands of posts and hundreds of intense, non-trivial, discussions / debates. I seem to be among the very few members here and elsewhere who bothers to detail my member profile (i.e. lay (synoptic) autiobiographical-philosophical cards on the table), not at all "hiding" behind either a name or moniker. That's my inner child, my daimon, up there on the top-left looking every one of my interlocutors in the eye with that earnest expression "Let's reason together, muthafuckas!" (Samuel L Jackson voice-over).

:death: :flower:

edit:

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/460745 :up:

Quoting 180 Proof

Let's reason together, muthafucka!

I like the concept behind this. I once started a highly unsuccessful website called humanitycomputer.org, the premise being that the human race should be able to reason itself out of whatever messing it gets itself into. Very idealistic - I was much younger and more naive then.

Quoting praxis

I’m a raging nerd

Made me smile.

Quoting Noble Dust

my go-to moniker wherever I happen to land on the internet

I often use 'the VRguy' for the same reason - having worked in the VR industry for decades.

My pen name.

I have to say anything else?

I like the word pinprick, for whatever reason. I think it started with the way the word is used in the Marilyn Manson song “Cyclops.” I had an artist friend and I thought “Pinprick Productions” would be a cool name for a production company. I liked the alliteration, and even came up with a logo and introduction thing you see at the beginning of movies. Basically, a black screen with dots of light being poked in it in the shape of a spiral (which again was a reference to the MM song). The word seemed to grow from there, and seemed appropriate for whatever I was doing creatively. I occasionally write poetry and used pinprick as a play on pen-prick. For philosophy, it seems to fit my style of primarily trying to poke holes in arguments, rather than create much of my own.