I don’t normally like to continue hijacks, but this is so obnoxiously stupid and it’s the pit that I felt like I couldn’t hold in my irritation.
Obviously “cognitive bias” (ie not being a true believer) limits the effectiveness of something that relies entirely on the placebo effect. That’s the whole deal. Magic only appears to work when everyone involved wants the magic to work and has no ability to be honest with themselves or think critically. What you said is no different from saying “when doctors give you sugar pills, and you know they’re sugar pills, that cognitive bias limits the effectiveness”… duh.
It must be like when those dowsers or psychics or telepaths can’t operate under controlled, observed conditions because the “negative skeptic energy is ruining the vibe man”
What nonsense can’t you defend with this line fo thinking? “You can’t evaluate psychic predictions by judging it for something it’s not, you have to judge it by its own criteria”? Astrology, Ouija boards, dowsing, healing crystals … sure we can take that silly “scientific” approach and discredit them all as being nonsense, but you have to evaluate them by their own criteria! Then they’re totally cool man!!!
Anyway, Der Trihs is someone who damages the side they argue on, even if he happens to be right. Which he does, sometimes. Most of what he’s said about religion is completely and obviously true - and yet both because he’s someone who’s so consistently crazy and often wrong (or at least too extreme) he makes it easy for you to dismiss his views, and so he actually damages the ideas he attaches himself to.
I cringe when I see him bashing religion, even though he’s totally right. Not that it’s hard to be totally right on the subject - it’s one of the most obvious things of all time if you have a little bit of honesty and critical thinking. It’s just that we’ve been culturally programmed to think that religious nonsense beliefs deserve more respect than other nonsense beliefs, and so few are willing to go as balls-out when calling religion silly as he is. But I know he’s not going to win over any recruits and he’s going to alienate anyone not inclined to already agree with him - and I also just feel generally uncomfortable being on the same side as him on any debate because how consistently wrong and/or crazy he is. So whatever he thinks he’s doing to fight for the cause, he’s probably doing just the opposite.
That said, I don’t think he really trolls or intentionally threadshits. I think he’s mentally ill to a degree. His world is so ridiculously black and white and unchanging and lacking in nuance that it’s sort of ironic that he correctly bashes psychology of religion, when some of the same shortcomings affect his worldview. So I have an easier time just sort of glossing over and dismissing his threadshitting, as opposed to someone like Shodan where he knows exactly what he’s doing and it’s deliberate rather than just an extention of being crazy. Which isn’t to say that I’m condoning him in any way - on most issues, like the OP, I more or less just skip his posts.
