Spyderman I don’t think it’s fair to say there are only a few good dopers. There are many, and that is the reason we are here. Can you provide a cite to support your 4:1 good to bad ratio? Nah, you needn’t do that, but at least think about what this implies. People are allowed their opinions here, but it should not come as a surprise when those that differ call for facts, evidence, reasons, etc. More often than not it’s done calmly and respectfully. Are there the occasional wankers who just want to flame? Sure. But I believe you are intelligent enough to either ignore them or put them in their place at your discretion.
That being said, I have seen even the calm rational dopers get slightly heated when a) they ask for evidence and get rhetoric or nothing in response, b) they take the time to cite facts and the opposition ignores them, c) the name calling begins on the other side, or a few other cases where one couldn’t really blame them for getting irritated.
I don’t think that ‘clique’ comment is really relevant either. I’m even a bit newer than you, but I find it quite normal that groups of dopers may have developed a type solidarity. Instead of feeling like an outsider, my advice would be to recognize it as normal and have faith that if your views and opinions are thought provoking [or laugh provoking], others will get to know you in time.
I’d also just like to point oiut the absurdity of the OP’s championing of being un-PC while imploring us all to be more accepting of everyone’s opinions. That’s about as I’m-OK-you’re-OK, ultra-PC as you can get.
The opinion that blacks should get 3/5 of a vote because they are not completely human is misinformed. The opinion that women shouldn’t enter the workplace because their poor fragile minds can’t handle the rigors of business is misinformed. The opinion that Jews were responsible for the downturn in the German economy is misinformed. And I’m not going to avoid challenging these opinions merely because they add to the diversity of opinions.
I think you should always challenge what you believe, even if it’s popular. Especially if it’s popular. Many “popular” opinions have at some point been fringe ideas, but that doesn’t make every fringe idea valid. See Carl Sagan’s comment regarding Galileo. So if you have to martyr yourself as a victim of SDMB popular opinion, you probably haven’t argued your position very well.
If that’s too much for you, then stick to MPSIMS threads. Post about a cute thing your cat did. If you can’t take the heat, don’t leave your igloo, Nanook.
This is the way things have been here since the SDMB’s inception. We have very intelligent posters here with tremendous intellectual integrity. They don’t rely on cheap attacks or logical loopholes to make points.
I think you’re extrapolating two Pit threads into a indictment of every forum on this board. And that’s a misinformed assumption.
Alphagene I am not championing being UN-PC -or PC (BTW, PC-ism really had nothing to do with the reasons why I started this thread) and I am not even talking about The Pit of which you are a Mod in. As far as I am concerned in the Pit anything can and will be said. The fact that you posted three (3) times to my OP would make it seem as if you feel that I was attacking what happens in the Pit personally. I don’t care to know you well enough to make any judments about the way you do your job.
The point that I am trying to make, PC or not, for as many intelligent people that this board should have, and what used to be a place for actual debate and reasoning, has somewhere along the line become something less than that. Of which I am sure has little or nothing to do with what happens in the Pit.
I have the choice of whether or not I come here or not (unless what I have done so far deems me being banned), and I have the choice of what posts I want to read and participate in. No one is forcing me to make any of these decisions. Do I want to be liked? Of course, who doesn’t. But here, of all places, (The SDMB - **not ** The Pit) should one be judged on the arguments they present or the way they are presented? I should be entitled to hold any opinion that I deem true to me, without fear of name calling. I don’t know about the rest of the SDMB but I am not in 3[sup]rd[/sup] grade anymore.
So rather than generalising can you locate The Golden Age of the SDMB in time? When was it this place you describe? I note your joining date and I guess I can assume you are going to say you lurked for millenia before joining so you could share your opinion that 4 out of 5 of us suck the big one.
I don’t recognise this place you describe. The SDMB has pretty much been how it always is and how most of us like it to be.
How polite should these discussions be? “I’m sure you have your reasons for believing school shooters are heros. All opinions are valued here and your opinion, although I think it is utterly ridiculous, should be taken seriously by me. So I’ll refrain from telling you that this idea is stupid. Let’s all hold hands now and sing Kumbaya.”
Discussions get heated. Language gets colorful. The mods do their best (and their best is pretty damn good) at keeping it manageable.
And the clique thingy. Well, I for one do think there are cliques. These cliques do not have membership dues or initiation rites. Anyone can join. The Dope is a real community. The dynamics of 2 or 3 thousand coming together almost demands that these groupings will occur. People become friends on this messageboard.
BTW, where’s my clique? I’ve been here a long time. I’ve got over 2000 posts. Where are my groupies damnit!
I think there are cliques that form on the SDMB, but not to the degree the OP is making it out to be.
I can think of three off the top of my head.
A Large Example: The #sd’ers (not affiliated with the Reader, blah, blah). We chat, discuss threads, make threads up, the whole nine. A wide variety of Dopers come in there (from your hardcore GD’ers, which is another clique all to its own, to Pit Whores.
A Small Example: If there is a thread about homosexual issues, then you are likely to see a few dopers pop up in there as well. Doing their part to fight ignorance.
A Personal Example: I tend to post in front of or behind Doper’s who enjoy Pro Wrestling.
So there are cliques on the SDMB, but not nearly as much power…
If you can back it up with facts, and argue your position in a reasonable and intelligent fashion, sure. But we’re here to fight ignorance, and arguing a position you can’t defend with facts isn’t debate, it’s preaching.
I try and hold no opinions to be sacrosanct. On my best days, this includes my own. To me, the inability to change one’s opinions in the face of new facts is a betrayal of the very things that make human beings interesting; adaptability, imagination, and wit. And since the very idea that opinions should be unassailable if they are held dearly enough makes debating on those opinions an exercise in futility, I tend to make fun of people with that outlook on life.
Well, that’s possible. Spyderman appears to know the name of the one who shall not be named that preceded Phaedrus–and that goes back to AOL/SDMB at least a year and a half before this board was established. (It doesn’t prove anything, since it may have been mentioned recently, but it makes the case plausible.)
I would tend to agree that if there was a Golden Age of rational discourse, it certainly preceded the “push pin” board on AOL (December 9, 1996), because I have read nearly everything since that point, and name-calling has been an aspect of this group as long as I can remember.
I think both sides are overstated, here. I suspect that a lot of discussions stay pretty “clean” in terms of leaving out the personal attacks. However, that will be more true on an issue over which equal numbers of people disagree. There are, indeed, a few issues in which one position or another is more likely to be shouted down than discussed to death.
No, you just got it backwards, Bucko. Correct = popular. People like being right, plain and simple, and when you have commonly-held evidence, that “opinion” tends to enter into the minds of reasonable people.
There’s a reason few people believe the Moon landing to be a hoax, or that circumsized men cannot ever be truly happy, or that the Bible should be taken 100% literally, or that homosexuality is deviant and evil…
It’s real simple–state your opinion, popular or not, and then have the guts to defend it. If you do, and if you actually have a point, then your ideas will survive in the marketplace. After all, a lot of currently popular opinions certainly didn’t start out that way–many were decidely unpopularat one time. They survived because while dissenters could try to shout them down they couldn’t prove them to be wrong.
If, on the other hand, you’re afraid somebody might speak harshly to you for expressing an opinion…well, maybe you better let other people handle debating. I mean, living in fear of being ostracized by a bunch of usernames you don’t know can’t be good for you.
In short, Spyderman, shit or get off the pot, but don’t bitch about how you don’t like the toilet paper.
SPOOFE said:
Ah, but this ignores the fact that at one time most people didbelieve that homosexuality was deviant and evil, and assorted other stupid things that would at one time or another have constituted popular opinion. 5-HT formulated it as “popular = correct,” and he’s right in the sense that the popular opinions of whatever group are presumed within that group to be correct. Whereas “correct = popular” doesn’t necessarily work–go back 150 years and see whether US popular opinion (in any part of the country) would have supported the notion that blacks were the equal of whites.
We like to think we’re the apex of enlightenment nowadays, but remember that humans have alwaysthought that. That’s why there’s nothing wrong with questioning conventional wisdom, provided there’s some basis for it.
True, but this also coincided with the time when many people were Ignorant about homosexuality.
Never said that there weren’t exceptions. But for every incorrect popular opinion, there were ten (or more) correct ones.
Additionally, the incorrect popular opinions were still based on Ignorance… if someone can present ample evidence to me that, say, the Moon landings were a hoax, I’ll start to swallow.
Let me whisper in your ear “Defense of Marriage Act,” and suggest that time is still with us.
Perhaps, or perhaps not–I don’t think that could be proven one way or the other. The point is that at that timethe people believed allthe popular opinions were correct–and believed they were entirely logical.
That’s my point–what is popular is presumed to be correct, whether it is or not. That’s why unpopular opinions have to come up and be debated–otherwise the chaff is never separated from the wheat.
True enough. But my point dealt with all the blatantly off-base types who hold to a particular opinion despite mounting evidence to the contrary (Flat-Earthers, for example). Normally, these are the ones who are met with flamings on the Boards, rather than people who say “Drugs should be legalized”.
I dunno… I was almost convinced, until Fox mentioned how you could see Homer Simpson in one of the NASA photos…
As long as it’s clearly understood that one of the rumors is really true–the American Revolution was a hoax. That’s right, suckers, we’ve been British all this time, and any day now they’re gonna reveal it and make us eat eels and mash.
