I think that’s because your position boiled down to “nuh uh.” You’re asking me to accept that you didn’t notice - but you’re generally pretty careful with your words and you seem to have been careful enough not to craft any other argument. I believe people didn’t say what you wanted them to say, but I don’t think you annoyed them unintentionally while you were trying desperately to educate them.
Waitaminute–do you mean I’m not speaking to investigators in the Hague? To members of Congress? To the Wondertwins? Are you telling me I’m just shooting the shit on a messageboard?
To the extent that what you’re saying is true, it’s true about nearly everything we discuss here: nothing we discuss here really matters, because that’s the nature of a trivial thing like a messageboard. How is this any sort of meaningful point to make?
It’s like one of those points that the think-they’re-smarter-than-they-are sophomores in your undergrad course would make based on reading the back cover of a Derrida book: “Nothing we say can communicate anything, because words don’t contain meaning themselves, maaaaan.” To the extent that those morons were ever right, you’d always wonder why they were bothering to speak in the first place: if communication is impossible, why tell me that?
Similarly: if it doesn’t matter what’s said on this messageboard, why post on this messageboard to tell us?
LHOD, I realize we are just arguing on a messageboard, and I was simply participating in that argument. Several posters were using their own belief about the ineffectiveness of EITs as an argument against EITs being used. I argued that that’s not a valid argument for the reasons I stated in that thread.
Of course, not. (Well, you did, but not on the particular case on which you are now hanging your hat.)
You deliberately avoided “making a claim” by falsely attributing positions to other posters and then asking whether they had stopped beating their wives. You had also poisoned the well with your earlier attempt at junior modding, for which you chose to be aggrieved when told to stop.
As noted, your basic behavior throughout the thread was one of making baseless claims against other posters, then replying “nuh uh” to any evidence they presented for their position, (regardless whether it was something you now claim was the “correct” response to any “claim” you carefully failed to make).
You do not get Moderated for pissing off other posters. (How many times have you received Mod notes or Warnings for your various posts regarding economic or political positions? I assure you that you have irritated many posters with those submissions and your positions tend to differ from those of the Mods in those situations, as well.)
You do get Moderated for playing games with the intention to irritate other posters and that is what you have been doing in the waterboarding thread as well as both of the ATMB threads.
I see no reason to continue to explain something that you already understand, even if it is more amusing to you to pretend to not understand or to make false accusations against the staff.
No, I don’t care to get into that game with you. And with you, it IS a game, you are not interested in debating or arguing fairly, you are mainly interested in scoring points off of other people.
So this all boils down to an argument from authority?
Its hard to believe thats a sincere argument on that board, but anythings possible I guess.
Otara
For example? If I did that, it should be easy for you to quote a post showing me doing it.
Such as?
How exactly was I supposed to discuss in detail that his cite did not support his claim? Was I supposed to repeat every sentence of his cite and show how that sentence doesn’t say there is a consensus among professional interrogators?
Wrong. Dead wrong. I’m just making a more subtle and nuanced point than “torture good,” so all the “torture bad” people jump on my case for not saying “torture bad.” That’s why they (and you) are irritated.
If this is the best you can do, I see no reason for you to continue either.
So. Going forward, when certain posters do the “No it isn’t”/“You’re wrong.” response, you will consider it trolling?
This is an inaccurate portrayal of what happened. Several posters used cites to leading authorities on interrogation to show that Major Cuddles are an ineffective means of interrogation, and you got into some sort of weird headspace about how many grains of sands equal a pile, or how many leading authorities on interrogation equal a consensus. They weren’t talking about their own belief about Major Cuddles, they were talking about CIA, US military, Napoleon, etc.
The point is, you admitted in the past that you sometimes post just to raise hackles. You can’t really run away from that, especially when you continue to post things that raise hackles.
We don’t trust you.
Why does your characterization of my posts in that thread change with every response you make to me? First you said I was simply saying that arguing on an internet messageboard has no effect on the real world, but in this post you are now saying I was doing something different than that. One could reasonably think that you have no clear understanding of what I was saying and are simply throwing things out there according to what seems like a good response to my last post.
It reminds me of a guy I went to law school with. He was always on my ass when we would talk, and everything had that bent of turning everything I said into bragging when I didn’t mean it like that. Once, we were discussing using laptops in class v. Taking hand-written notes. I said that I had little codes or shortcuts I used in handwritten notes that I learned from debate (which I said for the purpose of supporting the idea that writing wasn’t necessarily slower and perhaps my shorthand was an additional aid to understanding because it was an nitial processing of the info). His response: “Oh, aren’t you smart, Mr. Shorthand guy, look at you!”. He later dropped out of law school. I hope he learns that there are better ways of dealing with feelings of inadequacy than constantly picking on someone you believe is better than you.
Do you notice the letter than ends the word “posts”? It’s an “s”. In English, that often (and in this case) indicates that a word is plural. Since I’m presponding to posts, not a post (the “a” indicates a singular noun), of course the characterization changes as I characterize different posts.
You may be giving yourself advice here, in which case I’ll give you credit for being more self-aware than I thought–or you may be giving me advice, in which case you’re even less self-aware than I thought, but at least in a hilarious fashion.
You are concerned about how someone deals with feelings of inadequacy. You are certain that he has feelings of inadequacy. You know for certain what he believes about someone being better than he is. Are all of these statements accurate reflections of what you think or feel?
I did actually cite among other things the Army Field Manual. Others made additional and in fact better cites, but Rand ignored them. I saw no need to continue, because he demonstrated that he had no intention of changing his opinions, no matter the facts.