So… he tried to clarify one innocuous obsolete phrase by using another?
That’s just… dumb.
I’m forty-four, and I find Liberal to be an intellectual dullard with a nasty disposition.
Two things: One, where did imply the poster “couldn’t possibly” understand what the client had been through? Two, MissTake is not the poster I was addressing; it was monstro who I felt was perhaps too young to have understood what Lib was saying about how MissTake was likely perceived by her client.
I never said, and I’d really like to know how you come to believe I did, that MissTake was wrong in posting her complaint.
He did no such thing! (And you claim comprehension is my problem!) He attempted to describe how little the client would have been concerned with his hygiene and the offense he caused the OP, given all the other shit he had to contend with in daily living.
Well, I’ll have to leave it to Lib to explain what his intentions were when he said what he did. But I didn’t perceive it that way at all, and I didn’t get that impression from his follow-up answer, either.
Perhaps because this “need to lash out” exists only in your own mind? Lib did not act like a jerk in that thread. The offense that was taken to what he said was exactly what he said it was at the time: a misunderstanding. monstro and the OP misunderstood what he meant by his comments. He was attempting exposition of the client’s state of mind; they read personal insult.
Who was at fault? I can’t say. If Lib was at fault then I am, too, because I understood it the way he appears to have meant it. But I don’t believe it was Lib’s intent to annoy monstro or insult the OP.
Perhaps you could explain just how I’m lacking in exposition here, 'cause I’m spinning my wheels like mad trying to make you guys see what I’m getting at. How is it that I’m not being clear?
I was beginning to think that perhaps you had a point…but then you made this post where you demonstrated a complete and utter misunderstanding of my post to monstro, even down to and including the fact that you didn’t even know it was her I was talking to.
Excalibre
When you said something about me misspelling your name in that thread, I did not realize that you were referring to something from 2004. I looked through the thread we were in at the time, saw nothing of the sort, and asked, “What the…?”. I see now that I used the spelling of King Arthur’s sword on a couple of occasions last year. I apologize for that.
Perhaps. 
I was of the impression the “e.g.” meant “therefore,” whereas “i.e.” meant “that is.”
Is I wrong? 
That’s why I said “much,” rather than “all.”
Liberal – the same arguments had been made many times, but you ignored them. I don’t even remember if Darwin actually presented a “deductive syllogism,” but he did use a lot of sciency-sounding terminlogy that steamrolled you. You struck me not as a scientist having a high-level discussion with other scientists, but some drunk muscleman at a bar picking fights with everyone, but getting all meek when the bouncer shows up.
They’re watching I always wondered who they were. [They] is Dewey. 
Anyway, thanks for assembling and posting the list.
That would make sense indeed, and I would agree, were it not for the fact that the reference is not obscure or strange at all. It is, in fact, a quite famous reference made by Jesus during His ripping admonition to the Pharisees. He said to them, “You strain gnats and swallow camels,” — meaning, of course, that they pick over the minutiae of the law, while ignoring the greater precepts like mercy, forgiveness, and charity. Saying that the guy with such extremely low self-esteem views her as a gnat on a camel’s ass means simply that he — from his perspective — is worried about other things so much that her concerns are hardly even perceptible to him.
Perhaps I’m just young at heart.
Well, life beckons…so I must adjourn. Thanks for an interesting afternoon, all.
And keep on keepin’ on, Lib. You’re one of the most interesting posters here.
He did indeed offer a deductive syllogism, mainly, I think, because I asked him to. I wanted to see how he would derive the point he was making from a set of premises. His major premise was true. His minor premise was true. His conclusion followed from them as a valid modus ponens. I had no choice but to admit my error. That’s what logic is for, my opinion — to give clarity to an argument and make it open to inspection for validity, soundness, or fallacy. Upon seeing his deduction, I immediately changed my mind.
How I might have struck you is part of what I’ve promised to work on from the advice and criticism given in this thread. Naturally, it will take time to work through the list I made. Nevertheless, because you were hurt by my behavior, even if unintentional, I would like to offer you my sincere apology, and ask whether you and I might start with a clean slate. I will remember your name, and make every effort to be as civil and coherent as I possibly can.
Incidentally, my interest in that thread was not in the science per se, but in the philosophy of the science. Falsification is a philosophical principle. It cannot be scientific because it is not itself falsifiable; that is, you cannot test scientifically whether falsifiability is true.
Good night, Artist. I’m breaking off for now as well.
I know sometimes I don’t act too bright. But I still don’t understand what was too profound in that thread that an almost-30-year-old person with a Ph.D couldn’t grasp it. Was “gnat on a camel’s ass” a form of expression back in the 1950s or something? Was it Jack Kerouac or Lucille Ball who came up with “wells of fuck-yous”?
It’s all well and good to say he was using “grown up” language. But an intelligent person knows who his audience is. If he wants to be understood, he needs to speak like everyone else. It’s not about being “cookie cutter”. It’s about being a level-headed participant of a public forum.
It took pestering him for him to do this, though.
Good for you! You passed the test! But don’t you see why it would make the rest of us feel frustrated when we continually fail? Is it our fault for being so dumb? Or is it Lib’s fault for making the test too hard?
And I argue that any intelligent person could have anticipated the offense that would have been felt by Lib’s comments. Using my own logic, either Lib intentionally pissed people off or he showed he isn’t that intelligent. The latter can be forgiven. But the former is despicable behavior.
Maybe if it only happened once in awhile, I would believe you.
It just seems like you are bending over backwards to come up with explanations that aren’t very convincing. You seem to be placing the blame for all the communication problems on the listener, but not on the communicator–who is supposed to be this massive fount of wisdom and elucidation. I understand what you are saying. It just doesn’t wash with me.
I’m sore because I felt I made a pretty good case, with cites, and was ignored. However, I do like you and appreciate your post.
And now I look like a loud-mouth ass.
Starving Artist:
Sorry dude, I no longer have any clue what you’re talking about, or why you think I misinterpreted what you said. You wrote a post to Monstro. I quoted it. I used it as a jumping off point to describe exactly what was so unpleasant about Liberal’s behavior during that thread. I said you were being condescending when you said this:
When you said “offensive person”, you meant MissTake’s pungent client, correct? Your discussion of “generation gaps” and so forth implied that us young’uns don’t understand what it’s like to be down on our luck. If you don’t see why it’s patronizing to say, “Oh, you just don’t get it. You’re too young,” then I can’t help you. If, on the other hand, your claim is that Lib, at his most cryptic, will start to make sense when I get older, then I have to be skeptical.
You seem to have misinterpreted several things I said in that post, and I may well have been unclear, but I can’t follow anything else you said. I quoted a post you wrote to monstro in order to make a statement about Liberal (the pittee, remember?)
I never said that you said that MissTake told her client to take a shower. I don’t know where you’re even getting that notion. I quoted your post, but I was not writing a letter to you; it was an open message board, and in case you didn’t notice, I was describing Liberal’s behavior. Liberal stated that MissTake had added to the smelly client’s “well of fuck off” (or something like that.) To add to someone’s “well of fuck off”, you’d have to be saying “fuck off”. He implied strongly that MissTake had somehow insulted her client. She hadn’t. That’s what my post was about.
If Liberal didn’t intend any insult to the OP of that thread, the “well of fuck off” certainly implied it. Beyond that, you seem to have misinterpreted the thrust of my post so badly I can’t make out what you’re getting at.
Why in the world do you think I didn’t know who you were talking to? I quoted your post. You addressed mostro by name in that post. I must have been very unclear in the post in question, because you seem to have misinterpreted every part of it. I was discussing Liberal’s conduct in the linked thread. When I mentioned MissTake, I was describing Liberal’s behavior towards MissTake. She was the OP of the thread about the smelly client.
I don’t see the point in continuing this discussion, since we both seem to be piling misinterpretation on top of misinterpretation. At any rate, you badly misinterpreted my post. It’s not worth trying to figure out who said what to whom about who said what to whom about who said what to whom.
You brought me up in a thread about the word “fundy”, misspelling my name. I happened to read the thread, I asked you to spell it properly, and you continued to misspell it. I asked you again to spell it right. You posted another thread (your quickly-closed discussion of what constitutes a hijack) and you misspelled it there. Your misspellings continued in spite of two requests to stop, so if you mean to claim it was inadvertent, I don’t believe you.
Just a few days ago, in another thread, we were arguing, and I pointed out (dredging an example out of 2004, as you noted - probably the last time I had any particular contact with you here on the boards) your (purposeful) misspelling of my name. You claimed you hadn’t done so, so I wrote the post that linked to the threads containing your insults. You fled.
It wasn’t until I liniked to that post (linking to the two threads containing your insults) in this thread that you responded. You won’t admit to being wrong until you’re cornered, and you flee (and lie) to avoid doing so. Even know you haven’t acknowledged that it was on purpose.
You know, I wouldn’t have thought any less of you if you had admitted that you’d misspelled my name as a childish insult. But you’ll do anything to avoid admitting a mistake, won’t you?
Foreign to me. Perhaps it’s because I’m not a member of your religion, and haven’t therefore studied your particular Holy Book. Meanwhile, I’d just like to point out the irony of Liberal disclaiming the picking over of minutiae.
That is a patent falsehood, as a brief perusal of the threads in the list will prove to the reader.
The only threads in the list that could conceivably fit the description you proffer are the “Brief Foray…” and “Sucks Cycle” threads (and, of course, I dispute your description of even those threads – my questions were, as always, substantive in nature, save perhaps for a little frivolity at the beginning involving public nudity). The rest are normal debates on the relative merits of libertarianism.
Indeed, in the May 2004 thread Libertarianism: Sell Me (which is itself listed in the link list, and which came well after the meltdown threads), after I posted the latest version of the list (and solicited for any additions I had overlooked) you specifically asked me to locate a thread for you:
I then added that thread to the library, posting a link in the same form as the previously-posted link list. Rather than objecting to its inclusion of the list, you thanked me for finding it. Then you asked about my search-fu.
Now, I suppose I never explicitly said I was adding it to the list, and you never explicitly asked for its inclusion, but I think it was pretty clearly understood by all involved that it would be included. So why is was the list not afraud then, but suddenly is now?
This, too, is a falsehood. Indeed, I defy you to find an instance of me ever representing the list as anything other than a compilation of libertarianism discussions on this board, put together so readers can have some background on the topic.
I set up the list because it’s efficient, not because it’s fun. I have similar lists related to discussions on the nature of rights and constitutional law, topics with which you have had minimal, if any, participation, and I’ve posted them in later threads on those topics. Is that list for “petty spite,” too?
I continue to think it’s because I ask questions that demonstrate the flaws in your chosen philosophy, nd because you can’t handle answering difficult questions. I would very much like to be proven wrong on that front.
Take this as opinions coming from one who has pitted Lib (and Desmo, package deal) and also praised him:
Valid criticisms:
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Too quick to take personal offense and sling back vitriol.
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Too apt to indulge a weakness for snarky drivebys.
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Too fond of obfuscatory language – a fault made all the more grating because Lib is quite capable of clear, direct expression when he puts his mind to it.
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Too ready to assign opponents to some political pigeonhole and dismiss them as partisan robots.
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Too eager to recast, redirect, hijack debates into discussions of the Libertarian philosophy, no matter how tangential its application to the topic at hand.
Those are the major things that bug me. They’re all amendable with the application of due deliberation before posting.
“e.g.” (exempli gratia) means “for example,” not “therefore.” You’re right about “i.e.”