I dunno, 720 messages seems to indicate a certain amount of ‘caring’, and that’s only in the latest pit thread.
The level of hatred coming from people who claim to be against ‘hate’ and for ‘safety’ is really quite something. You’re a bunch of hypocrites. You claim to be tolerant, but you lash out constantly at people that don’t agree with you. You’re for diversity - in everything except opinions and values, where it counts. You claim to be for equity, but you join into groups and punch down at people in the minority on this board.
You all need a long session of looking at yourselves in the mirror. Your main schtick seems to be projecting your own faults onto others.
We’re not tolerant of willful ignorance and lying, and have never claimed to be. Read the banner at the top of the page, dude. Willful ignorance and lying is what the Straight Dope exists to fight. (And inadvertent ignorance, too.)
Nobody particularly minds your not agreeing with us on matters of opinion. What we mind is your misrepresenting matters of fact, and trying to cover up your goofs by pretending they’re just disagreements about “values”. You may be fooling yourself with that bluff, but you’re not fooling anyone else.
There’s actually a hell of a lot of diversity of opinions and values on these boards. But when it comes to tolerating the “values” of willful ignorance and lying, the SDMB is indeed a nearly unanimous hivemind of resistance and rejection. If you don’t like that, well, the door’s right behind you.
(We’re also getting better than we used to be about resisting and rejecting bigotry of various sorts. If it really bothers you so much that these boards are no longer a Musk-style “free speech zone” for unfiltered “opinions and values” promoting racism, sexism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia, etc., again, you can easily find the door.)
This really highlights your misunderstanding of the situation. It is not about your opinions or values. It is about your consistent laziness (at best) with regards to citations, and how you keep making the same factual errors over and over and over and over and over again.
See the first post. Is there a point where an intelligent person like yourself looks at the stacks of errors and says “Hmmm, maybe I need to do things differently? Maybe I need different sources of information?”
Like I used to tell my kids “If you think everyone else is an asshole, then you’re the asshole.”
Well-informed posters are good when they are also well-educated. But people who maximize information at the expense of educating themselves are horrendous. They’re informational magpies who collect thousands of scraps of news and information to weave bizarre nests tailored specifically for the comfort of their own beliefs.
They find themselves unable to see or comprehend any structure that’s unlike their own magpie nest. They congratulate themselves on possessing a uniquely habitable lair, and look down from it bleating challenges to anyone else to build such a wonderfully elaborate nest of bread ties, cigarette butts, and shiny scraps of paper. Because nobody else seems interested, they congratulate themselves on being masters in the category of shelter-construction.
You seem to have missed the part about “… on most non-political subjects”. Your description is accurate with respect to Sam’s political views. They don’t detract from the fact that he’s knowledgeable about many aspects of technology. Of course, if one can spin technological assessments to support a right-wing ideology, Sam will be all over it. But the fact remains that Sam is a knowledgeable poster who contributes considerable value to the board.
Like a skilled refrigerator repair technician who can’t help stealing things every time they come into your house. Yes, your valuables are missing but darn it, your refrigerator sure keeps cool afterward.
Let’s say that I made a statement, “I saw a study saying that black people can’t see well in the dark and can’t be used in military service, because you need people to be able to see at night.” People ask for a cite and I provide a link to a white nationalist website that discusses some paper written by some crank doctor that way never peer reviewed and just posted to his personal blog. The others point out that the website I chose is white nationalist, that the “study” is pretty much just an opinion piece, and that none of the conclusions follow from any of the evidence that was presented. And now, I say, “Woops, I just looked for the study. I don’t know that website, I didn’t check it before posting and I’m not a white nationalist.”
Now let’s say that I’m being entirely honest in this. I didn’t check the website, I didn’t realize that it was a white nationalist website and I really did just want to link to the research paper that I’d read about.
I’m going to propose that this doesn’t really change the situation much.
Firstly, we’re talking about a blog post that would, from the start, only be of any particular interest to white nationalists, racists, and the like. Even if I didn’t encounter the original information about the “study” from that specific, white nationalist website, it’s inordinately unlikely that I would have come into contact with it from a notably better alternative. Wherever it is that I saw the information originally was unlikely to have been better.
Secondly, once I went to find the study again, Google’s results would almost certainly not have come up with respected, recognized sources as its top results. The whole page of Google results would be a flashing, siren raising load of questionable, no-name websites with obvious racist and white nationalist bent. Every URL and page title would be screaming out that I’ve made a bad choice in life. And yet, I simply, blithely continued on to click into one of them that seemed less crazy and assumed that this one must be reasonable.
Thirdly, there’s still that whole, “Didn’t check.” Element that I, myself, admitted to. How did I get into this whole predicament to begin with? I read on some website - without checking the reasonability of that website - about this study. I accepted - without checking - that the study they discussed was a reasonable and well executed study. I’m real bad at double checking my own work.
Fourth, knowing that I’m bad at checking my work and having had someone else do it for me, I’m now aware that the white nationalist site is bad. Maybe I’ll never use it again. But, have I gone back to my original source, that I never linked to, and decided to drop it as well? Have I gone through all of my other failures of the past, worked to identify where I got the bum information on all of those, and dropped those sources as well? Have I gone into Facebook and Instagram and all my other sources of information and started to tell them to not recommend sources that I know mislead me? Have I really changed or have I committed to simply putting a band aid on it and continuing on as before?
I had a recent case where someone that I knew was explaining to me that X-private anxiety content was trending. I had to explain to them that they’re basically giving me a psychological profile of themselves that their psychiatrist would need to keep absolutely confidential, by telling me what content they’re clicking on regularly and forcing the algorithm to find and push more of, targeted specifically to them.
Click on things that are normal, light entertainment and watch those to the end and you’ll get light entertainment. Click on videos that are about men slapping women, watch those videos to the end, and your feed will be all domestic violence, all the time.
Self-control is mission number 1. If you screw up though, the “Not interested” button will cure what ails you in a few sessions of weed whacking.
Also useful for the relative who mostly posts clickbait reshares from a few sources but whom you don’t want to entirely mute lest you miss out on photos of their cute dog.