That’s because you haven’t heard my amazingly original and groundbreaking argument against abortion that no one has ever considered before! /jk
A lot of convo around here on trans sexuality and transsexual people has that same fantasy air as does flat-Earthism or 9/11 denial.
It’s real. Get over it. Once everyone is past that hurdle then maybe, as @Velocity suggests, there are useful debates to be had.
It’s the topics that get stuck, or trolled, into something like Monty Python’s Argument Clinic that are sterilized by the sheer contrariness of some fraction of the players.
I’d say that discussions of gun control in the United States have long passed the point of being useful. We’ve heard every argument from every side, and it’s clear to me that nothing less than a complete revolution in the US will ever result in any meaningful gun control legislation. It doesn’t matter how many murders or mass shootings occur, so it doesn’t matter if we dredge it all up again every time a shooting occurs. It’s clear that a significant fraction of the US population has decided that such events are a price they’re willing to pay to retain their gun rights, and I can’t imagine anyone finally finding the One True Argument that will finally change that.
Funny, because gun control is one position where I really have changed my mind. Leaving aside registration or other restrictions (that I’m in favor of), I no longer think that “assault weapons bans” are coherent or make any sense at all.
That’s why I referred to “meaningful gun control legislation”. Sure, you’ll see some cosmetic stuff, like banning bump stocks, but no one will ever address the fundamental issues of too many people having too many guns, and being too willing to use them. Meaningful gun control would require a fundamental re-alignment of the entire gun culture in the US, and that’s just not going to happen.
Banning discussion of certain thoroughly hashed-out topics proven to draw detrimental and wrong conclusions has a downside: when proponents come up with new theories/examples that supposedly prove their point(s), there’s no opportunity here to quash their bullshit.
yes, this is exactly what I meant.
And yes, this exact topic is one I was thinking of and one that I completely ignore now whenever I see it.
True. But when they come up with their cockamamie ideas, there’s also no opportunity for them to post them here either. We dont’ need to quash what we never have to put up with.
Ref e.g. @NellietheElephant just above, if I wanted to spend my days trying to drain the cesspool that is e.g. Reddit, I’d be over there, not over here.
@NellietheElephant: I doubt you got a proper welcome, but your post just above is exactly the kind of recruit we’d love to have. So welcome. I for one hope you stay awhile.
And yeah, there is a certain amount of “we did that in 2008, go away.” around here. Believe it or not, less than there once was. But truly there are lots of newer topics that still need a thorough horse-beating. No matter how long ago the horse was most sincerely dead 
35 tired and trite dead horses in the blog post cited by the OP, vs five proscribed by the SDMB’s TOS. Not too much to ask. Or you can go on other forums where the members won’t bother to debate your challenge to their assumed superiority and just downvote you anonymously into oblivion.
Let’s save the bandwidth to get to the bottom of what causes piss-shivers.
What LSLGuy said, welcome to the board!
Ketchup on a Hot Dog. It’s wrong. Full Stop.
Mustard on a hot dog. It’s wrong. Full stop.
The objection is that the sugary ketchup drowns out the spices in the frankfurter (the quality brands - not the spongey pink chicken hot dogs fed to children and the institutionalized).
An argument that would hold up if Mr Gourmand wasn’t washing it down with a Coke loaded with HFCS.
That would be a good argument if the proponents actually wanted to critically examine evidence, both ours and theirs. They do not. They just want to spout their idea, ignore reality then claim we didn’t prove anything.
Any advocacy for pineapple on pizza should be met with immediate instaban with prejudice.
Ban me then. Pineapple is great with ham.
Instinctively, I’m not comfortable with the overall notion of banning certain topics from discussion but I understand why it is done and agree that some subjects on the SDMB are pretty much all talked out.
I would only hope that when and if someone is capable of adding a coherent, good faith argument (no matter how unpopular) to one of these subjects, they be allowed to do so.
We know that posts from a new poster in, e.g., a “How was the destruction of WTC on 9/11 caused?” thread are usually going to be nothing but tutti-frutti noise. But I don’t think we should automatically reject new, good faith arguments (having at least moderately decent, but not perfect) of something fishy happening on 9/11–even after so much has clearly been debunked.
Wholesale rejection of any wild new theory has all the scientific integrity of the 15th Century Catholic Church. Yet, there still needs to be a way to stamp out all the nutty-nuttiness that’s oft-repeated.
I guess I’m saying, let’s try not to take this “banned topics” thing too far.
Just a comment, but it’s the “good faith” element that keeps coming up. For the most part, we can assume that most posters here are acting in good faith, although some of us have blind spots on specific issues, for good and ill.
Far too often, posts touching on the “tired topics” or on other subjects that have been discussed to death are NOT acting in good faith, they’re trolls, trocks or “truthers” on a certain subject. Which is why there’s a great deal of suspicion ( Mea culpa btw) of any new poster, especially if they post on charged issues right away.
The one subject I’d consider adding to the topic is the whole role of trans athletes in sports. YES, there’s possible valid discussion about advantages, but there’s such a morass of implicit and explicit bad faith in the various arguments that each and every time it comes up it ends up in the same ruts ( pre/post surgical, transition pre/post puberty, XXY or other non-binary AAB gender, etc) that I can’t see any positive discussion or debate that outweighs the bad feelings and intra-board aggravation bordering on hate.
Each and every thread touching on the subject is not only heated, but full of each side trying to score points, often by cherry picking data sets, examples, and outliers that it’s often unspeakably hostile past the first few dozen points. Granted, since this is IMHO, I admit that I find the arguments against good faith (there’s that phrase again) trans athletes replete with errors, and nearly zero convincing evidence that there’s a number of such athletes attempting to do so in bad faith.
Just my $0.02 on the subject of this thread.
I actually got that joke, which makes me feel like a real SDMB old timer.
I thought you were better than that.
Allow me to edumacate you on “the three rules of mustard”:
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The only acceptable mustard is Dijon, with the sole exception set out in Rule #2.
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Plain yellow mustard is required for hot dogs, and for hot dogs only, and it must be applied from a squeeze bottle in the form of swirls atop the frankfurter after all the other ingredients have been added.
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Ketchup on a hot dog is an abomination. It is an affront to nature and to the Lord our God.