I like Lib and have found this thread very unpleasant… yet, in the time I’ve been here, this is the norm for a Pit thread. Posters pile on the pitted (or sometimes the pitter). I don’t see anything out of the norm in this thread.
I appreciate that thought xenophon41, and coupled with Lib’s comment I realized that although that plea may not be in other’s hearts, they are redeemable nonetheless. Each and every one. 
I’m going to try to carry that view whenever I visit the boards. Thanks for helping to provide a new perspective.
Starving Artist, I didn’t even blink at Desmostylus’ statements to me. It was so obvious that he considered nothing of what I said. So why would I give it even a moment of concern? 
I don’t really mind Liberal, and I don’t think at all he’s a jerk. I’m fairly confident he sincerely believes in everything he says, and does not try to be deliberately obtuse. However, my only issue with him is he has a tendency not to be able to separate the forest from the trees, and argues irrelevant minutae with disregard to the entire context of a situation. And oftentimes, I find his thinking to be frustratingly literal and linear, applying rules of strict logic and math to situations that do not function under these rules (language, for instance.) He strikes me as the type of guy who would argue that when Mick Jagger sings he “can’t get no satisfaction,” he really is singing that he does get satisfaction, because if you follow logic in deconstructing the sentence, that’s what it means.
Maybe that’s not the best example, but that’s the kind of semantic wrangling that tends to frustrate me from his posts. Once again, I don’t think he’s being insincere when he argues like that.
Sometimes the truth hurts. The truth of the matter is that Lib can be very unpleasant on the board. I have no problem believing that he’s a stand-up guy in real life because my own persona is a little different when I’m away from the computer. But until he lightens up a little, he deserves the :rolleyes: that often gets thrown his way. Putting up with him shouldn’t require some mega-dose of lovingkindness and compassion. We shouldn’t have to get to know him in real life in order to put up with him. He should be held to the same standards as everyone else.
I’m glad he seems to be receptive to constructive criticism, though.
Gum: You’re leaving the entire SDMB because some people don’t like Liberal? I’d advise you to reconsider that. Especially since this is, well, a pit thread. At least nobody’s talked about his habits with goats.
Liberal: I would hope that you could add something else to your list of accepted solutions. Stop talking, and especailly ranting, about “the left” or “the right”. Often it’s just an ideological dodge whereby you use a fallaciously fungible second person plural pronoun to demonize the people you’re arguing against. Other times, even if it really isn’t your intent, it looks like you’re just doing it to call out to the world just how wonderful you are.
“Democrats? You all suck and you’re ruining my world! Republicans? You all suck and you’re ruining my world! Independants and Libertarians? You all suck and you’re ruining my world! Luckily enough only I understand the full complexities of politics and have all the right answers. I will now mock you for getting ‘your’ candidate elected, or for not getting ‘your’ candidate elected. Because I am smarter and wiser than all of you. What’s that? My political party? How’re we’re doing in the polls? How close we were compared to Kerry’s polled numbers? Um… shut up! It’s all your fault that Kerry lost the election, because you’re stupid.”
Just sayin’ is all.
To clarify, on page 1, Polycarp stated that he had personal knowledge of Liberal, and that Liberal had training in formal logic. I called bullshit on the training in logic.
Liberal is a bit confused about what it means for something to be “falsifiable,” I can tell you that (based on the natural selection train wreck). Overall, I find his reasoning blocked by a fast-held belief that he’s a shade righter than everyone else, which premise leads him to some distorted and batshit-crazy positions. A little intellectual humility would do the man good, but he’s not the only one here with that disorder, and he probably means well on some level partially obscured by his megalomania.
I find it Liberal easier to take once I got used to the fact that he is smarter than I am.
Yes, he nitpicks, and some of his stuff comes at you from out of left field. But he is one of the major reasons the SDMB is the way it is.
Sometimes he brings tears to my eyes, and sometimes I want to strangle him. Sometimes both.
Regards,
Shodan
PS - Demostyles, I see from your most recent that you don’t get it. Allow me to encourage you to keep posting in that spirit.
Let’s be fair: this is the thread where he initially dissented, listened to the opposing views, and eventually said “okay, I accept these arguments and stand corrected”? Not the best example of intellectual megolomania, it has to be said. Maybe you think it took too long for him to agree, but then that’s easy for us to say, as we already agreed with ourselves.
On a lighter note: when attempting to hijack a thread and another poster atempts to cut you off using a mildly self effacing remark, do not agree with the self-effacing remark and think you scored a “zinger”. It is truly lame.
That’s probably good advice for quite many people. Just to be clear, I didn’t mean to imply by my list that I had X number of faults and no others. Nor did I intend to imply that I would suppress my opinions to spare people having to hear them. But I did intend to imply that I would try to be less acerbic whenever I criticize anyone, which is what I meant by: “I sometimes hurt people’s feelings by my choice of words, and my approach in general to certain topics.”
This is quite interesting to me. Because I’ve tangled with Lib a few times, and, well, he just ain’t all that bright. Certainly, he’s an intelligent man. But he’s far from being one of the intellectual lights of the SDMB. I’ve noticed that some people appear to regard him as a particular master of rhetoric or logic, but frankly, the only logic he’s ever used is repeating that tired old ontological proof of the existence of God. And his main rhetorical tool is hostility and insults to those who disagree - or suddenly disappearing altogether. I just don’t understand why you would think that this makes him a “superior intellect”.
That’s not what “animus” means. Perhaps you meant “anger”? Animus is a male force in Jungian psychology. Again, I don’t see why you’re confusing Liberal’s smug intellectual condescension with actual intelligence. He’s one of the laziest, most cowardly debaters here, and his reliance on big words and irrelevant logical proofs is one of the biggest parts of it - he attempts to make others feel stupid enough that they bow out of debates with him. It’s a dishonest, rhetorically invalid, and intellectually indefensible attempt to avoid having to do the real work of debating.
Liberal, in another thread recently (if the rest of you search for it, you can see some of me at my worst), I brought up your childish tack of misspelling my name, either as an attempt at insulting me, or allow you to talk about me without my finding it in vanity searches. You persisted in doing it even after I asked you to stop, and though it was some weeks ago, for me, it’s come to be one of the best examples of your childishness and your unwillingness to engage in genuine debate.
Anyway, like I said, I brought it up in the thread; you claimed you hadn’t done it. When I linked to the threads in question, you disappeared. Frankly, Liberal, you’d earn back a little respect if you didn’t lie about it, and hide when caught in the lie. Why wouldn’t you come clean on that one, if you are willing to admit when you’re wrong?
Lib, that’s not what anyone said. You’re twisting others’ arguments to suit what you find it easy to argue against. Again, you’re not honest when you debate. The issue is that you pretend to be smarter than you are, and you use that in an attempt to make others give up when arguing against you. No, indeed, you’ve never claimed to be educated - you’re one of those who takes a great deal of pride in their lack of formal education. But no one here cares about your educational credentials anyway - we care about your attempt to use smarts as a bludgeon.
I’ve developed a habit of just rolling my eyes when I encounter them rather than attempt a response, so I don’t have any off the top of my head. I’d be glad to compile examples for a later thread, if you like.
You unilaterally hijack threads when no one has made an issue of your opinion. You’ve said before in this thread that you’ll argue points that you don’t agree with. And you do it all the time - and your petty little intellectual dick-measuring contests overwhelm the thread, making it impossible for anyone else to discuss the issue at question. I don’t understand why it’s so hard for you to see how irritating that is to those of us interested in the subject.
Incidentally, when others post things they don’t believe just to stir shit up, well, they are not permitted to do so for very long. Since you’ve admitted it yourself, I find it puzzling that you’re still here. But I suppose that’s not really my business.
Keep stroking, Shodan, I don’t think Lib’s climaxed yet.
:rolleyes:
I don’t understand this at all. You’ve admitted to arguing positions you don’t hold just to get those views out there (i.e. to get a rise out of others); you’ve admitted that when you speak, you’re often quite nasty even when approaching a thread you haven’t been involved in before.
So what you seem to be asking here is that, when you jump into a thread, disingenuously arguing something just to tweak the twenty people already engaged in a discussion about it, and when you immediately imply that those who disagree with you are morons (which you do), you want people to respond politely, to help you to be nicer?
I don’t understand why your being nice would be someone else’s responsibility. I think people have individual responsibility for what they say and do; I don’t understand why you choose to deliberately incite pile-ons if you’re not capable of responding with the grace of a man to other’s disagreement.
Moreso for you than for most. You have a nasty habit, as others have pointed out, of suddenly bringing up what you imagine another person’s political affiliations to be. I’ve yet to see you apologize when you were caught at it. (Didn’t someone link from this thread into the one where you called jinwicked a “leftist” when politics hadn’t even been brought up yet in the thread?) Stop trying to weasel out of this stuff, Liberal. For Christ’s sake, you do this all the time and you do it far more than any other poster. Don’t try to reject responsibility by implying that everybody does it. Even if this were true, it wouldn’t make your doing it any less indefensible - and it’s not true at all.
I’m still a little sore about it, because he ignored my own and several other cogent and cited posts for days, then said [So and so] had “finally” explained it. Where’s that eye-rolling icon? It’s not fair to be pigheaded for days, then claim that my pigheadedness was just due to the inability of other posters to baste me over the head with a clear enough post. A guy’s gotta meet you half way, by actually reading your posts, clicking to your cites, and understanding your points (even if you disagree with them). Liberal tends to willfully obscure issues and nitpick so he can demonstrate he’s righter than you. And that thread is a good example of the megolamania. Rather than just agree with whatever the OP was, Liberal began with the standard delusion that he was smarter than the object of the pit, but also a bit smarter than the person writing the OP, and thus got himself into an indefensible position. It’s a pattern that is replicated throughout the pit. Find me one where Liberal’s first post is one of complete agreement with the OP rather than making into a pissing contest.
All that being said, I admire Liberal and Diogenes for having dominant personalities. Everyone knows who they are. The rest of us jostle amongs ourselves with half-assed little posts here and there, but don’t do anything pitworthy or memorable. If you can’t make a name for yourself by being all-knowing and Cecilesque, you might as well do it by being a complete bastard in an interesting way.
I’ve kept this little set of links for whenever a libertarianism argument creeps up on the SDMB; it’s easier than re-arguing the same ground over and over. But several of the threads are crystal examples of the kind of behavior on Lib’s part that this thread is highlighting.
The “My Foray…” threads and the “Sucks Cycle” threads are particularly apt in that regard, as is the recent brief hijack in the John Stossel thread.
THE SDMB LIBERTARIAN LIBRARY
March 2000
Nonfiction: Why Libertarianism Won’t Work (Reason No. 5,472), by spoke-
July 2000
Historical Fiction: Sarah’s Gold, by Libertarian/Liberal
Oct. 2002
Short Story: Riboflavin the Murderer, by Libertarian/Liberal.
Nonfiction: Libertarianism and Coercion, by Riboflavin.
Humor: Blue-Skinned Libertarians, by Milt.
Nov. 2002
Nonfiction: Libertarians and the Electorate, a collaborative work.
Dec. 2002
My Foray into the Nuances of Libertarianism:
A play in three acts starring Dewey, Lib, and several other Dopers.
Act I – BBQ Pit
Act II – IMHO
Act III – BBQ Pit Revisited
Epilogue – GD
Short Story: The Freedom Paradox, by Blaron
Jan. 2003
Nogginhead the Inquisitive:
A one-act play with the usual cast.
Prequel
The Play
Nonfiction: Libertaria and the Environment, by Gadarene
Short Story: Culture Asks Some Questions, by culture.
Feb. 2003
Short Story: Libertarianism and the Children, by drachillix.
The Sucks Cycle:
Riboflavin Sucks, by Libertarian/Liberal.
Dewey Sucks, by Libertarian/Liberal.
Manifesto: Practical Libertarianism, by Jonathan Chance.
March 2003
Literary Criticism: Information as Coercion Exception, by Apos.
Survey: Unimplemented Political Ideas, by Florentine Pogen.
April 2003
Travelogue: Libertarians To Infiltrate Idaho, by Dewey Cheatem Undhow.
June 2003
Foriegn Affairs: Why No LP Outside the US?, by BrainGlutton.
July 2003
Comparative Studies: Anarchism vs. Libertarianism, by Panzerfaust.
May 2004
Panel Discussion: Why do Libertarians vote Republican?, by Polerius.
Collected Letters: Libertarianism: Sell Me, by tdn.
August 2004
Inquiry: Question for Resident Libertarians, by brzrk.
January 2005
Lib Hijack: John Stossel’s descent into madness.
It doesn’t strike me as being far fetched, since pretty much half the people out there with bachelor’s degrees in the humanities took a philosophy course or two.
Training in logic doesn’t mean you’re a logical person any more than being a doctor means you can’t be overweight or addicted to nicotine.
Could you PLEASE start leaving me out of this.
Don’t make me start another PL thread.
Clearly he has “animus” confused with “animosity.”
(I’ve never used that Princess Bride quote and I’m not going to do it here.)