Another Horrible thread at SDN

[GStone]

I'm not even going to bother reading the SDN thread. It'd just make me angry and upset. Instead, I'll shoot down the guy I'm debating as he brings things up.

One of the really odd things about them is the ease in refutting their sayings, eventhough they try hiding it under mountains of obfuscation.

[Dragoon]

Yeah. It's insane how the ICS doesnt match up with the rest of the canon, even if you bring in the rest of the EU.

[Mike DiCenso]

As I pointed out in another recent thread, the EU actually doesn't back up the AoTC ICS fanwank crap as much as the talifan Warsies would like it to. If you need any reminding, just go check out Elim Garak's Obsidian Order Project pages, forever preserved, though the tailfan Warsies would like you to forget it's there:

http://st-v-sw.net/STSWObsidian.html


Yup, them X-wing lasers in "X-Wing: The Krytos Trap" were clearly dialed down, and Daala's "All turbolaser batteries, full strength." clearly means "Dial down to minimum firepower" in Galactic Standard. ;-)
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Dartan wrote:
Personally, I take neither side in this debate, as I enjoy both shows and just have fun imagining a Star Destroyer fighting the Enterprise[/i

Yeah, well what you're describing there is how the original Usenet debate started out in the mid-90's. It was just fun musings, as well as a way to kind of educate people on real science. But it's mutated since then into what it is now with rabid talifans attacking anyone and willing to do anything so long as they "win" the debate. It's not fun anymore.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Holy jesus. That SOB. I wondered why he was taking so long to reply...


For those of you who want to know, I'm the dragoon1940 fellow they're talking about. I guess I should be flattered that he felt he needed backup...

Dragoon, could you prehaps post a link directly here to your DeviantArt.com thread? I hate relying on anything the SDN Warsies post about anyone else as they love to snip and cut to make their opposition look bad.
-Mike

[Dragoon]

I'll give you one when the debate is over. I'd rather not be accused of doing the same thing he is. My primary concern is making it public. If you'd like, I can give it to you via PM.

[2046]

But it's mutated since then into what it is now with rabid talifans attacking anyone and willing to do anything so long as they "win" the debate. It's not fun anymore.
-Mike

Well, it did mutate, but that doesn't mean it's not fun. Having fun with people who are fanatically irrational (not to name any names) just requires:

1. That you ignore them and stick with non-insane people, and keep doing whatever it was you were doing. That's hard to do at times online, given that certain folks habitually proselytize whereever they can find a conversation in progress online, and/or engage in board invasions. I haven't noticed them doing that quite as much lately, but it still happens pretty frequently.
2. Alternately, you simply have to change your mind, viewing such individuals not as a boil on the butt of humanity's efforts toward rationality, but instead as a perennial source of amusement (if even in a terrible way, at times).

The falsehoods of the insane must be challenged, and while it's good to get practice on this topic (where the stakes are so extraordinarily low), there's still so much fascinating human drama and psychology revealed. For most healthy-minded types, the raving loons just have such an inescapable Otherness to them.

It's easy to slip into the wrong mindset, though. People who are raving loons online are one thing . . . whereas village idiots used to be contained to their villages, the internet gives them worldwide access to spout their ideas. The real innovation of the Talifan-types, though, is that they take the internet and try to use it as a tool for real-world access far beyond their village.

Hence nightmare scenarios like loonies posting folks' personal info, maps to the house, and discussing in their little groups who lives closest and might be able to come a-knocking.

By no means should we credit SDN with this innovation. Many other collections of nutjobs (is that a gaggle? ... certainly not a pride!) have done this sort of thing before. Animal rights nutjobs have been well-known for it for years before the SDN'ers figured it out, and various other whackaloons were doing it before all the fingertip-tools of the internet were available.

But, SDN-types might've brought this sort of bad behavior that little bit much further into the realm of the masses. After all, an animal rights group is a relatively insular thing, lacking the general appeal of, say, sci-fi. And whereas animal rights whackaloons proselytize, everyone knows about that sort of loon. Few might realize just how many animal rights terrorists there are and certainly most don't presume that animal rights folks are terrorists, but the usual rabid animal-rights'ers idea of an animal's life being equal to or superior to that of a human isn't going to gain much traction among the normal.

On the flipside, no one really knows much about SW wankery, though folks have noticed the traction of the ideas slipping as their patterns of force become more well-known (Karen Traviss, et al.).

Of course, I feel the need to reiterate that just because a claim is supported by a whackaloon doesn't make the claim wrong. If SDN'ers, fundamentalist Islamic terrorists, animal rights terrorists, and the leader of North Korea all got together and, after careful study and consideration, concluded that the sky is blue (and in the bonus round, that rain is in fact wet), the fact that *they* said it is no reason to dismiss it out of hand, logically speaking. But, it still behooves us to be damn sure they're right before banking on it.

That having been said, there is also the issue of what I call the Bastard Fallacy. Often, politeness (such as is maintained, albeit with some effort on JMS's part, here) and the demand of it is called a "style over substance fallacy" by SDN'ers. That is to say, they argue that "the sky is blue because of X, m------f-----" is logically equivalent to "the sky is blue because of X".

This is true, to a point. However, I would submit that the tone of one's claim is also of import.

To be sure, there comes a time when you just have to call a spade a spade. Some people are not just idiots, but determined idiots, and there's simply little that can be done but to ignore them or, failing that, mock them.

The problem, naturally, is determining when this threshold has been reached.

For many, patience wears thinner and thinner after repeated use. The age-old retort "RTFM" bears witness to this. Certainly I've received feedback on more than one occasion where I've responded with a one-line sentence and a URL to one of my pages.

But more to the point, I'm sure we've all written (or seriously considered) a vitriolic reponse to some moron. I'm quite certain I've written more than a few, since I've been the target of more than a few posts by determined idiots.

But in an era of increasing polarization (e.g. in politics), it seems that the threshold is getting lower and lower. Perhaps the issue is just that the internet, as mentioned earlier, allows more and more bombardment of the ideas of whackaloons (or those that whackaloons consider to be whackaloons), to the point that everyone's losing patience.

However, the fact remains that tone is important. Those who demonstrate no patience at all just act like bastards all the time.

Hence the Bastard Fallacy, which I consider to be a special case of the old poisoning of the well of discourse, itself a special case of the good old ad hominem.

The basic premise is that in any serious or quasi-serious public discourse, unjustified and unmitigated buttholery towards one's opponent, even in cases where a logical argument is also present, is an effort to poison the well of discourse. This poisoning can be against the opponent, such as in the case where one is surrounded by an allied peanut gallery, or can simply be a generic poisoning so that dissent with a group's prevailing view is shown to be intolerable.

I've certainly been guilty of being a bastard in this way, and though I could certainly try to excuse myself based on the fact that I was the victim of it long before I ever exercised it, the fact remains that I'd imagine there's been a time or two or ten wherein I ought to have been slower on the trigger.

That having been said, though, I know my old custom with known SDN'ers was to try to treat each new thread as a tabula rasa for them in my mind, so with many of them I've just plain given up. C'est la vie.

But anyway, back to the original point, the debate is still fun for me, because evidently I derive great amusement from the sound of my keyboard clacking. Hence this 40.2 billion word post. ;)

[SailorSaturn13]

I'll give you one when the debate is over. I'd rather not be accused of doing the same thing he is. My primary concern is making it public. If you'd like, I can give it to you via PM.

Talking behind someone's head to conspire is one thing; bringing friend into debate is another. Just remember, if THEY use SDN as claim basis, You also can use websites as basis; that's just fair.

[GStone]

In fact, it only makes sense to use websites. With the wide range of topics used in the debate, how many people have studied all the background info on the topics that might be brought in...all the nuances of physics or biology or engineering? Most haven't and don't have time to because of real life. You don't need to copy websites verbatim. Just understand enough and you look up some stuff as supplimentals to what you've read. Studying from books in university and studying school/scientific websites are a lot alike. Just because someone has a few letters by the name of their degree doesn't mean they know it. They could have cheated and don't know shit about the topic.

[Praeothmin]

Studying from books in university and studying school/scientific websites are a lot alike. Just because someone has a few letters by the name of their degree doesn't mean they know it. They could have cheated and don't know shit about the topic.

I have to disagree to some extent with this comment.
Studying in school has the advantage of having professors that can clarify obscure points from scientific papers that you may not understand right away.
Unless you're a genius, just reading books about applied astrophysics will not grant you the same expertise as someone who activelly studied it.

BUT, because there is a but, even if you have studied the subject in a school, unless you regularly use that knowledge (as in a job dealing exactly with your field of study), then a few years after you obtained your diploma, you may know even less then one who has read all the up-to-date scientific papers relating to the subject of discussion.
A formal education background will also help you expand your understanding capacity, because you see a lot of different vews, different angles on the same subject, and you can usually compare all those vews in practical tests.

So I wouldn't dismiss a formal education as much as that.

Although it is true that someone who reads a lot can learn about a great many things, specially in our "free-all-over-the-place" information era... :)

[GStone]

Unless you're a genius, just reading books about applied astrophysics will not grant you the same expertise as someone who activelly studied it.

I am a genius, but the intelect didn't present itself till the summer before my last year of college and that...so bloooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooowwsss. Before it happened, almost nothing was easy in school. My brother's intellect manifested when he was like 2 or something, but it never was that important to me. It still isn't, but I hate mine didn't show up till then. I do have the perspective from both sides of the fence and mostly, it is the same. It's as you said, the obscur parts. While some don't, there are some teachers that welcome talks from people that aren't their student. There are even sites, like ask the astronomer, whose job is to answer things. It's a little harder because you don't have as much as access to the same info, but it's mostly okay.

BUT, because there is a but, even if you have studied the subject in a school, unless you regularly use that knowledge (as in a job dealing exactly with your field of study), then a few years after you obtained your diploma, you may know even less then one who has read all the up-to-date scientific papers relating to the subject of discussion.

That's probably the best reason these days to enter or even stay in the debate, to keep your knowledge sharp.

[Dragoon]

Well, he hasn't replied in about two and a half days, but he's been online. So, I've told him that unless he posts some kind of counter within the next 12 hours I'll assume he's conceded defeat.

[Gandalf]

Well, he hasn't replied in about two and a half days, but he's been online. So, I've told him that unless he posts some kind of counter within the next 12 hours I'll assume he's conceded defeat.

You know it's possible that real-life has taken priority over the debate. Just because he's been online doesn't mean he has time to respond to you.

[Socar]

This is why setting time limits for debates is usually a good idea. Of course, that only really works when both sides are playing by the same rules, as opposed to one of the participants having others come up with their arguments for them.

[Gandalf]

This is why setting time limits for debates is usually a good idea. Of course, that only really works when both sides are playing by the same rules, as opposed to one of the participants having others come up with their arguments for them.

I disagree, there is no reason to set time limits on a debate unless it is some kind of academic exercise. And if Dragoon is using a website as a basis for his arguments than his opponent should be able to ask for help. Although the least he could do is formulate the argument into his own words rather than cut/paste.