And we have a special reservation for the doily-knitting community to murmur politely amongst themselves. Its called “GD”, its down the hall, past the room with John Cleese in it.
You took a wrong turn, mister. You wanna back out to main and take the Great Debates exit.
Edit: Ninjaed.
I think you’re on to something. I’m much nicer in real life, where I bore even myself.
No, I mean “fairly” - that is, applying a consistent standard.
It is if they apply one standard to politicians on their side, and a different standard to those on the other.
You understand my point perfectly.
You agree that there are plenty of conservative complaints, and that some of them are justified. You also observe that there are hardly any liberal complaints, justified or otherwise. Therefore, there are likely to be more justified conservative complaints than justified liberal ones. This is especially so, since there are relatively few conservatives actively posting on the SDMB, at least in GD or the Pit.
Read thru this thread, and watch the standards change.
Regards,
Shodan
No. Way.
In real life, you’re the guy who catches your eye on the bus and delivers a withering critique of Hipster Gypsy Girl’s conversation that everyone’s overhearing.
You can’t be this HI-larious here without it spilling over into real life. (I know, because I too am HI-larious. Luckily, I’m a teacher…where I use my power for good: keeping Adderall-adled brains alert. Nothin’ like an off-color pun for that)
Now, Bricker’s more likely the guy on the bus loudly interrupting Hipster Gypsy Girl to bring up an obscure legal point. And when people tell him to shut up, his first response is to yell “You’re glaring at me, but you didn’t glare at that guy in the Biden 2016 shirt over there! That’s not faaaaair…!”
Looks to me like Bricker started that thread as kind of a jerk and got plenty of civil responses going to great pains to explain why his stance was jerkish.
I don’t know if “strain” fully captures just how widespread it is. I mean, get a load of this guy:
So you really have your work cut out for you.
[Note to Max the Vool: In the context of our discussion, the intention here is not to point out that LHOD is a hypocrite (though that too may be the case). Rather, to observe that his ostensible position that one cannot discern the motives and intentions of other parties is not honestly come by, and is simply seized on for expedience, when it happens to serve his purposes WRT a particular issue.]
I feel your pain.
It’s possible that it would be less boring if you understood it, but as it is, who could blame you. My advice for you is to stick to drive-by one liners where you have some actual ability, and leave substantive matters to those who are capable of dealing with them.
Totally and completely miss the point.
My belief about voter suppression isn’t based on imagination: it’s based on my interpretation of the evidence. You may have a different interpretation, and I think that the correct interpretation is debatable. But that’s not at all what I’m talking about here.
No, the Imagination Debaters are people who say things like, “IOKIADDI” or “IOKIARDI” or “if this was a leftist source you’d be hating it” or “you’d ban anyone who said the same thing about Chinese people” or whatever. When your argument depends on what someone’s behavior would be like in an alternate universe, on what you imagine them doing under circumstances that aren’t real, you have a crappy argument.
I’m not sure whether you have some sinister intention in saying “alternative universe” or “circumstances that aren’t real” versus the simpler and more accurate “different circumstances”. ISTM that you are deviously trying to imply that those who you’re opposing are somehow detached from reality, without actually having to make that claim. But I could be misjudging you. 
Leaving that aside, you are not making a valid distinction, and there is no difference between these two things. Saying “if this was a leftist source you’d be hating it” is identical to saying “you only hate this because it’s a rightist source”. Which is no different than a judgment about the motivations of voter ID law promulgators, and which may or may not be accurate in a given situation, depending on the evidence - as you note. But in any event, it’s completely valid as a logical approach.
Someone who objects to “if this was a leftist source you’d be hating it”-type arguments but is OK with “you only hate this because it’s a rightist source”-type arguments is being logically inconsistent. (And if they like and use the one when it’s to their benefit and object to the other when it opposes them, then they are also being hypocritical, FWIW.)
I dunno - I’m willing to give PBS my trust (even if they can be considered a leftist source) but not Fox News (who I trust can accepted as a rightist source), because the latter (regardless of bias) has a demonstrated willingness to lie and distort.
Put simply, Fox News has my distrust not because of their bias, but because of their bullshit. I feel no compulsion to “balance” where I put my trust - trying to equalize it between left- and right-wing sources - I’ll trust the guys who seem to be lying the least.
Sorry, typo. That should be “… saying “you only don’t hate this because it’s a rightist source””
That has nothing to do with the issue, but it’s possible you were misled by my typo. My apologies if this was the case.
Here’s how Bertrand Russell put it.
What about drinking at Maxwell’s on Main?
I doubt I was misled - rather I was trying to cut to the heart of the issue - the implicit suggestion that the opinions of someone who trusts left-ish sources more than right-ish sources can be dismissed on that basis.
I mean, there’s no point dancing around the issue, is there? You want to find a formula that lets you justify dismissing contrary opinions not on their own merits but because of some aspect of the person expressing those opinions, right?
No, that has zero to do with the issue.
LHOD gave, as an example of a “crappy argument”, a LW person acusing a RW person of failing to discount a source that should properly be discounted by asserting that this RW person would discount the source were it a LW one.
It was an example. No one is making an actual comparison of LW sources vs. RW sources here, and any such comparison is irrelevant to the discussion, which is about general logical processes.
He started the thread to try to determine if there was a standard that would be applied consistently. But there wasn’t one - every standard used to determine bias on the right suddenly became invalid when applied to the left.
That’s why people were saying he was jerkish, and why people complain about him now - because he points out things they don’t want to admit.
Regards,
Shodan
No, there’s nothing devious about it: that’s exactly what I’m saying. I’m explicitly making the claim that those people whose arguments depend on how their opponents behave under imaginary circumstances are detached from reality.
Given your later correction, you’re essentially wrong. I can observe what a person does in the real world, and I can comment on their motivation.
I cannot observe what they do in an imaginary world, except in my imagination; that bears no relationship to the real world. Furthermore, there’s no conceivable way for a person to defend their imaginary self from your imaginary charges.
Let’s look at your incredibly stupid and offensive claim from before:
Now, it’s fine for you to have an active imagination. I’m sure it makes the day go by faster. But for you to make this execrable claim about other posters is for you to detach yourself from reality: you are indicting them for the horrific crimes they’ve committed in your imagination.
As such, you’ve made a terrible and shameful argument.
As noted previously, a comment on someone’s motivation is identical to a comment on how that person would act in circumstances which were identical absent that motivation. (Or other circumstances where that motivation was present.) There is no difference.
No one is being “indicted” for anything other than what they actually did in that thread. They were indicted in that thread for having lynch mob mentality, in that thread.
I made comparisons to other instances of lynch mobs throughout history for illustrative purposes. Those are other examples of people who committed excesses though they genuinely believed they were fighting horrible threats, and they were aided and abetted in coming to this erroneous belief by the same type of lynch mob mentality which prevails in that thread.
It’s easy for people to look back at historical incidents and scoff at the foolishness of people in other times and places who committed excesses, but much harder for people to recognize that they themselves suffer from the same weaknesses in comparable circumstances. So it’s useful to reflect on human nature as it manifests itself in such situations.
But again, no one was actually being indicted for crimes that they did not commit.
This all seems rather obvious to me, and it’s hard to imagine that I should even have to point this out. But that’s how it goes these days. There are all types of people out there …
Sounds good. No doubt there are few matters more substantial than the question of whether liberal posters do or do not have poopy pants.
Uh-huh… I think I’ll stand by my assessment, thanks.
Oh, it wasn’t quite as dry and inquisitive as you suggest. Rather it was more akin to “Well, I guess since you guys are okay with stomping puppies to death, I guess it’s okay for me to stomp a kitten to death. Huh? Right? Huh? Prove me wrong, puppy-stompers!”
Well, I’m saying he was jerkish for the reasons I’ve just given. Why others might have said he was jerkish is not my concern. That there might be, say, 40 posters who determinedly embrace left-wing issues while criticizing right-wing ones, and only five who do the reverse, thus leading to a greater overall amount of praise for left-wing issues and scorn for right-wing ones rather than the opposite… I’ve no problem admitting that. I do have a small problem feeling any particular worry about it, though.