Bricker fooled me for too long

[MaxTheVool]

@Shodan

Your request was
You were given exactly what you asked for. Now you are asking for something else.

That’s nonsense, but I’ve run out of energy to pursue this.

Look, there are only so many ways for you to say “yeah, you might be getting unfair treatment but I don’t care because it isn’t me”.

I have never said this

I get it - you think conservatives should just suck it up. That’s not going to happen.

If you can come with something productive to improve the situation, I’d like to hear it. And your current plan, which is spending a lot of time mumbling about “The Usual Suspects”, doesn’t really seem to be helping things.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

You know how the entire plot of the Usual Suspects was to distract the viewer from realizing who the real villain was?

I’m starting to think the entire career of Shodan is designed to distract the reader from realizing who the real Usual Suspect is.

[VinylTurnip]

Encouraging thought. I particularly like the part where he goes underground and is never heard from again.

[Shodan]

Don’t bet on it.

Regards,
Shodan

[elucidator]

If you hear about a band of Galt Guerrillas forming in the Sierra Madres Mountains, and you don’t hear anything from Shodan…then: it has begun.

[Bryan_Ekers]

Will it start when someone chalks a dollar sign at the feet of a statue of Ronald Reagan?

[drewtwo99]

@elucidator

I think someone should point out to Shodan that this thread isn’t about him, since he never actually fooled anyone. I would, but the hamsters don’t let him see my posts, because he is so open-minded and fair, it would give him a sad.

This post made me laugh pretty much continuously for the past couple of minutes. Thank you, elucidator.

[elucidator]

Joy.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@MaxTheVool

It’s entirely possible to be condescending, smug, insulting, weaselly and a lot of other Bad Things while debating without ever descending to snark or outright insults, and Bricker fairly often does those things. Not always, and in fact I’ve had some number of actually quite interesting debates with; but to hold him up as some imperturbable paragon is pretty silly.

Well I didn’t say imperturbable paragon. I said “tends to post in a rather measured way” and “his actual tone is almost always calm and factual. Especially by the standards of this board”.

The context here is not about whether we should erect a statue of Bricker, but why he attracts so much hostility, and what’s relevant is how he measures up against other posters.

I’m sure that happens some. And sometimes there’s some validity to it, and sometimes not. Has there been a pattern among the far right in recent years of being anti-scientific? I’d argue there has been. That doesn’t mean I can point at a single case where the Tennessee school board bans teaching evolution (or something) and say “ha! this proves that ever Republican everywhere is stupid and hates science”. But neither can you just say “isolated incident! isolated incident!” forever.

Furthermore, if I point out such a thing and say “I believe this is part of a pattern” and you say “but, hey, some liberals don’t respect science either, because they oppose vaccinations” (or whatever), that doesn’t either prove that I’m a hypocrite, or prove that there isn’t a pattern. It’s entirely possible for there to be some Bad Trait which there’s a pattern of on one side, but which still exists on the other side.

Of course it’s possible, and you’re free to argue that case. But that doesn’t mean that the “the other side does it too” argument is irrelevant or pointless. It’s just an argument in favor of a conclusion that you disagree with.

True, but I don’t really see the relevance. And note that it’s entirely possible for there to be lots of smart and honest people on what is later clearly shown to be the wrong side of an issue. I’m sure there were lots of smart and honest people arguing for slavery in 1840, and for segregation in the 1950s.

The relevance is what I wrote earlier. That you’re unlikely to have many opportunities for mathematical type refutations, and ultimately it comes down to judgment.

Slavery and segregation are mostly about values, and are also not much subject to that type of refutation.

Now, obviously I’d like to think that the truth is (a), or more likely (a1), and you might think it’s somewhere between some of the other possibilities. And that’s a topic we might debate. But here’s where we get back to the main point (finally), which is twofold:
(1) If we are entering a debate about the filibuster, and you bring up the fact that my opinion now appears to be different from my opinion in 2005, you can do so by saying, “hey, Max, I respect what you’re saying, but here’s a quote from 2005 which appears to be saying something different… can you explain that discrepancy?”, or you can do that by saying “but look at this quote from 2005! That proves that you’re just a partisan hypocrite! lol!”. Which is more likely to lead to a meaningful debate?

This is just a discussion of tone, which is another issue altogether. (Personally, my own tone tends to vary based on who I’m talking to.)

IMO, if you’re really interested in improving the tone of this board you have much lower hanging fruit than the tone of conservatives bring up the issue of liberal hypocracy. But YMMV.

(2) There’s an interesting debate to be had right now about the state of the filibuster as it exists at present, and whether we should modify the rules. That’s a debate that might actually be worth having, as (unlike abortion, or gay marriage, or gun rights) it’s not something that has been gone over so many zillion times on the SDMB that nothing new will ever be said. But if that debate starts, and then suddenly it veers off into debating whether or not MaxTheVool specifically, or SDMB liberals in general, are hypocrites; then the odds of interesting ideas being exchanged about the original debate topic drops drastically.

As above, I think the hypocrisy calls into question the validity of judgment calls being made on issues of this sort, and as such is a valuable perspective. Yes, it might be that it can divert the discussion somewhat. So can a lot of other things. On the whole, I’m in favor of valid perspectives being brought to bear, and letting the chips fall where they may.

I don’t think I’m quite as down on things as you are in that context… I’m not sure if I’ve actually REVERSED my opinion on any big hot button issue based on SDMB debate, but I’ve certainly come out of debates with a somewhat different mindset due to the ideas I’ve been exposed to.

I would guess you might be somewhat less doctrinaire than a lot of other posters here, and even you’ve apparently never actually changed your mind about anything. So again, I think that changing other people’s minds is not a big priority here, and anyone who goes in with this as their goal is going to be very frustrated. And anyone who modifies their posts to the point of removing arguments that support their point in service of this goal is going to be even more frustrated.

But that pretty much requires that there be an actual debate, not just yet another who’s-more-of-a-hypocrite fest.

People react differently to Bricker than they do to other people because he’s Bricker, and there’s a history built up there. Part of that is due to his ideology, and part isn’t. A random stranger who comes in and starts a conservative OP will be treated differently than a random stranger who comes in and starts a liberal OP.

Not sure what your point is…

That it’s at least in part due to ideology. Sounds like you agree to that.

The “some (possibly unknowable)” part of that sentence makes it almost certainly true, but also pretty meaningless. I’ve kind of lost track of what we’re really addressing here, but while it’s almost certainly true that Bricker is more generally disliked than a poster who had a totally identical posting style but who was liberal instead of conservative; it’s also not possible to truthfully make claims like “oh, you people just get mad at Bricker because he’s a conservative”, or anything of that sort.

It’s possible to make these claims, which you are free to disagree with.

What I was addressing was your initial claim that it was obvious that conservatives would be treated differently, versus your subsequent reluctance to “speak for all liberals” on the matter.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

The problem is that the imaginary adventures you and other posters go on aren’t the same as “absent that motivation”; they’re “with another set of motivations.” Someone who objects to something that’s slanted rightward wouldn’t necessarily be okay with it when it’s slanted leftward. Someone that joins in condemnation of someone who’s accused of pedophilia wouldn’t necessarily join in condemnation of someone who’s accused of Jewishness. Someone that defends a Democrat who does something wouldn’t necessarily condemn the same actions from a Republican. The exact equivalence you set up is absurd.

As is sometimes the case, it’s hard to tell whether you’re being dishonest or are genuinely confused. You need to directly address the points that are being discussed in the post you’re responding to instead of dancing back and forth, bobbing and weaving like a washed up welterweight.

Here’s the history of this discussion.

You acknowledged (post #308, second paragraph, reiterated in post #317) that it’s possible to make an assessment of other people’s intentions. Of course you only admitted this when it was pointed out that you yourself had done precisely this, but you admitted it nonetheless.

But you then went on to attempt a distinction. You were not opposed to these types of assessments. You were opposed to saying what someone else would do under alternative (or “imaginary” as you preferred to call it) circumstances. So I took that at face value, and responded to that.

And my response here (posts #309, #318) was that once you’ve made as assessment of the others’ motivations, then it logically follows that you have some ability to predict what they would do under alternative circumstances. To use the examples we’ve been discussing:

IF “you only don’t hate this because it’s a rightist source” THEN “if this was a leftist source you’d be hating it”.
IF “voter suppression is the political purpose of most voter ID laws” THEN “if these laws did not accomplish voter suppression their supporters would not be pushing for them”.

These are essentially the same thing, and to claim to support one while opposing the other is nonsense.

So what do you come back with now? A complete non-sequitur. “Someone who objects to something that’s slanted rightward wouldn’t necessarily be okay with it when it’s slanted leftward.” Well, yeah, you don’t say. It’s possible. But if that were the case then you would be wrong in your assessment that the motivation for opposition is the fact that it’s slanted rightward. And you’ve already accepted that assessments of motivation are valid.

Anything could be wrong. It’s possible, just maybe maybe possible that - and don’t have a heart attack now - that the great Left Hand of Dorkness is wrong in his assessment that “voter suppression is the political purpose of most voter ID laws”. If that were the case, then it would also be incorrect that “if these laws did not accomplish voter suppression their supporters would not be pushing for them”. And if someone made the assessment that “you only accept this because it’s a rightist source” but that “if this was a leftist source you’d be hating it”, that guy could be wrong too. Arguments do not become invalid because they could possibly be wrong.

So in sum, here’s the logical chain.

1. You acknowledged that posters - well, at least you personally, but presumably others as well - can make assessments as to the motivations of others.
2. If one understands the motivations of others, one can have some predictive ability as to what these others will say/do/think in hypothetical circumstances.
3. Ergo - to the extent that #1 holds - one can make statements about what others would do under alternative circumstances.

If you have anything that actually addresses this in a forthright manner - which of course presumes that you’re actually capable of thought which is not merely some variant of “liberal good; conservative bad” - have at it.

[Left_Hand_of_Dorkness]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

As is sometimes the case, it’s hard to tell whether you’re being dishonest or are genuinely confused.

Didja see that? You know, where you didn’t even consider the possibility that YOU were the person in error? That failure, right there, is a pretty big personal problem you have.

You acknowledged (post #308, second paragraph, reiterated in post #317) that it’s possible to make an assessment of other people’s intentions. Of course you only admitted this when it was pointed out that you yourself had done precisely this, but you admitted it nonetheless.

“Admitted”? For pity’s sake, I acknowledged the bleedin’ obvious. If you’d also like me to admit that the sky is blue, that you’re a carbon-based lifeform, or that children’s books have pretty pictures, let me know, and I’ll make those terribly embarrassing admissions, too.

And my response here (posts #309, #318) was that once you’ve made as assessment of the others’ motivations, then it logically follows that you have some ability to predict what they would do under alternative circumstances. To use the examples we’ve been discussing:

IF “you only don’t hate this because it’s a rightist source” THEN “if this was a leftist source you’d be hating it”.

Let me try to explain this to you a different way.

A motive I can reasonably detect in someone else is, “You tend to be partial to sources that are slanted leftward.” A motive that I cannot reasonably detect in someone else is, “you only don’t hate this because it’s a rightist source.” When you phrase it the way I phrased it, it’s a motive. When you phrase it the way you phrased it, it’s a tortured bizarre predicated absence of a motive.

I could detect the motive I discussed (and I’m using the word “motive” here advisedly–it’s not the best word, I think, but that doesn’t really matter) by noticing that someone tends to use lefty sources when they’re called on to use sources. How would you detect th emotive that “you only don’t hate this because it’s a rightist source”?

IF “voter suppression is the political purpose of most voter ID laws” THEN “if these laws did not accomplish voter suppression their supporters would not be pushing for them”.

Not necessarily. Back to my cat story. My cat was killed by my car, but that doesn’t mean that if she hadn’t been killed by my car she would have been immortal. It just means that that was the immediate and actual cause of her death. Remove that cause–go into imagination land, in other words–and we don’t know what would have happened.

If you have anything that actually addresses this in a forthright manner - which of course presumes that you’re actually capable of thought which is not merely some variant of “liberal good; conservative bad” - have at it.

And this, my friends, is why you never take your irony meter near the Internet: it voids the warranty.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@Left_Hand_of_Dorkness

Didja see that? You know, where you didn’t even consider the possibility that YOU were the person in error? That failure, right there, is a pretty big personal problem you have.

Do all your posts include the possibility that you may have been in error? Do any of your posts include that possiblity?

Actually in my case some of them do. But not this one.

A motive I can reasonably detect in someone else is, “You tend to be partial to sources that are slanted leftward.” A motive that I cannot reasonably detect in someone else is, “you only don’t hate this because it’s a rightist source.” When you phrase it the way I phrased it, it’s a motive. When you phrase it the way you phrased it, it’s a tortured bizarre predicated absence of a motive.

I agree that it’s pretty tortured, but I had to put it that way because I was dealing with a weasel.

I would have put it as: “you only accept this because it’s a rightist source”, but was afraid you would bounce back with the fact that there’s a middle ground between accepting and hating.

I could detect the motive I discussed (and I’m using the word “motive” here advisedly–it’s not the best word, I think, but that doesn’t really matter) by noticing that someone tends to use lefty sources when they’re called on to use sources. How would you detect th emotive that “you only don’t hate this because it’s a rightist source”?

If someone consistently accepts sources of similar veracity when they’re rightist but hates them when they’re leftist, this would be evidence that they’re motivated to accept it (or they “don’t hate it”) because it’s rightist.

Not necessarily. Back to my cat story. My cat was killed by my car, but that doesn’t mean that if she hadn’t been killed by my car she would have been immortal. It just means that that was the immediate and actual cause of her death. Remove that cause–go into imagination land, in other words–and we don’t know what would have happened.

This is just you playing games.

The cat wouldn’t be immortal, but it wouldn’t have died at that exact time and place either. So it would be correct to say that absent that car accident the cat would not have died at that time and place, which is the same thing from the standpoint of the logical structure. You’re artificially forcing a false dichotomy in which it either dies under the car or lives forever in order to bolster your silly example.

If you believe that Republicans are motivated by the desire to suppress votes, then you believe that absent that motivation - all else being equal - they would not be motivated to support them. (Observing that all else might not be equal is just blowing smoke, because for the purposes an argument about it the statement can be validly made about a scenario in which all else is equal.)

[elucidator]

You know, F-P, you could probably help me out, here. Got this lefty memory, doesn’t hold on to facts that put the right in a good light. Maybe you can help me identify this Republican guy with the admirable stance on the whole “voter ID” stinkpot.

Not that Husted guy, who, despite getting spanked in court, continued to look for any way to rig early voting to favor his party. And not that Pennsylvania guy, bragging about how voter ID was going to hand his state to Romney. Certainly not the crazy lady who said that Romney lost her state by 200,000 votes due to voter fraud.

No, I mean that one guy, that Republican guy, who said something like “Hey, we have to look at this, and if it turns out that there’s any real chance that this voter ID is unfair to poor or minority voters, well, we have to fix that! No way we go forward with a plan that offers us an unfair advantage, that would be wrong, and we don’t do wrong…”

That guy. Can’t remember the name, thought maybe you could help me out. Want to friend him on Facebook. Have to join Facebook, probably (ewww!), but hey! He deserves it!

So I figure you can help me out with that, there’s probably dozens and dozens of them, fair minded Republicans who wouldn’t dream of taking unfair advantage. You must have a bunch of their names right at your fingertips, so if its not too much trouble…

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

@elucidator

You know, F-P, you could probably help me out, here. Got this lefty memory, doesn’t hold on to facts that put the right in a good light. Maybe you can help me identify this Republican guy with the admirable stance on the whole “voter ID” stinkpot.

Glad to help someone with lefty memory problem, especially if, as in your case, you seem to have gotten past the first step, in admitting that you have a problem. (“Hi, my name is elucidator and I have lefty memory …”)

To refresh your memory - or you could just look it up, if you prefer - this is not a debate about the motivations behind voter ID laws. What we were discussing is whether it’s possible to identify the motivations of other people’s positions. LHOD attempted to impugn me for engaging in this, and then had to do some serious weaseling when it transpired that he had done the same in this very thread.

It just happens that the example that LHOD engaged in was about the motivations of Voter ID law promulgators, so discussions of the logical soundness of this practice have had some ongoing focus on this particular example. But that detail is not germane to the discussion. It’s just an example.

[Inner_Stickler]

So, that’s no one then. Awesome.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

It means I haven’t followed the whole voter ID issue in depth, and so have no idea and can’t be bothored to find out.

If that helps reinforce your pure and innocent faith in your beliefs, that’s fine with me. You probably need all the help you can get.

[Lobohan]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

Glad to help someone with lefty memory problem, especially if, as in your case, you seem to have gotten past the first step, in admitting that you have a problem. (“Hi, my name is elucidator and I have lefty memory …”)

To refresh your memory - or you could just look it up, if you prefer - this is not a debate about the motivations behind voter ID laws. What we were discussing is whether it’s possible to identify the motivations of other people’s positions. LHOD attempted to impugn me for engaging in this, and then had to do some serious weaseling when it transpired that he had done the same in this very thread.

It just happens that the example that LHOD engaged in was about the motivations of Voter ID law promulgators, so discussions of the logical soundness of this practice have had some ongoing focus on this particular example. But that detail is not germane to the discussion. It’s just an example.

Heh. I remove my previous statement in the light of his last post.

[Inner_Stickler]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

It means I haven’t followed the whole voter ID issue in depth, and so have no idea and can’t be bothored to find out.

If that helps reinforce your pure and innocent faith in your beliefs, that’s fine with me. You probably need all the help you can get.

I can only assume that means at all as it’s not exactly a labyrinthine issue.

I have no faith in anything. I used to have faith that I could count on Bricker for a defensible conservative viewpoint but he’s since destroyed that.

[Bryan_Ekers]

Hulk not impressed by verbiage!

[MaxTheVool]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

Of course it’s possible, and you’re free to argue that case. But that doesn’t mean that the “the other side does it too” argument is irrelevant or pointless.

It’s almost always pointless. If a Republican has a sex scandal, and there’s a thread discussing it, then bringing up a Democratic sex scandal is only actually logically relevant if someone in the thread is making a slightly outrageous claim like “ONLY Republicans have sex scandals”. Which is certainly not a claim that is made very often… and if it is, then you have my blessing to refute the living fuck out of it.

@me

If we are entering a debate about the filibuster, and you bring up the fact that my opinion now appears to be different from my opinion in 2005, you can do so by saying, “hey, Max, I respect what you’re saying, but here’s a quote from 2005 which appears to be saying something different… can you explain that discrepancy?”, or you can do that by saying “but look at this quote from 2005! That proves that you’re just a partisan hypocrite! lol!”. Which is more likely to lead to a meaningful debate?

This is just a discussion of tone, which is another issue altogether. (Personally, my own tone tends to vary based on who I’m talking to.)

But the difference in tone is a key distinction as far as I’m concerned. A bunch of what I’m talking about in this thread is the extent to which threads that start out about (presumably interesting) topic A end up turning into what someone once aptly described as “lol ur a hypocrite”. So to me it’s a Bad Thing when a thread gets so derailed by the hypocrisy angle that the original discussion gets lost and forgotten. And derailment of that sort is far more likely when the initial broaching of possible hypocrisy is accusatory and insulting rather than questioning and polite.

IMO, if you’re really interested in improving the tone of this board you have much lower hanging fruit than the tone of conservatives bring up the issue of liberal hypocracy. But YMMV.

Doubtless true.

As above, I think the hypocrisy calls into question the validity of judgment calls being made on issues of this sort, and as such is a valuable perspective. Yes, it might be that it can divert the discussion somewhat. So can a lot of other things. On the whole, I’m in favor of valid perspectives being brought to bear, and letting the chips fall where they may.

Well, to a certain extent I agree. I mean, I don’t think that there should be rules restricting what types of side issues can be brought up in threads, because any such rules would stifle organic discussion. That said, accusations of hypocrisy are a particularly odious type of tangent for various reasons:
(1) They can be brought up in pretty much every political thread ever
(2) They’re very hard to actually disprove. (I mean, if we’re discussing the filibuster, and you say that my opinion about it now is because of what party is in power, how can I disprove that? I mean, there’s some chance that I happened to post in a thread about the filibuster in 2006 and remember that I did and can search it up and link to it, but even if in fact my opinion has not changed, it’s reasonably unlikely that I’ll be able to demonstrate it.)
(2a) They’re also usually irrefutable due to their vagueness. Who is being accused of hypocrisy… me, MaxTheVool, specifically? SDMB liberals as a group? All liberals as a group?
(3) They’re insulting. No one wants to be called a hypocrite. If Bricker says that my opinions and beliefs are WRONG, well, I’ll debate with him about it, but at some level it’s only just and proper that he thinks my opinions and beliefs are wrong, because I think his opinions and beliefs are wrong. But that’s all just good debating fun. But if he thinks I’m a HYPOCRITE then by gum that pisses me the fuck off because I’m pretty sure I’m not (except that I kind of worry that I am, because I’m sure I’m not perfect, but that just makes me MORE pissed off and defensive, etc. etc.), and suddenly there’s anger and bad names are being flung around.

So again, I think that changing other people’s minds is not a big priority here, and anyone who goes in with this as their goal is going to be very frustrated.

Sure, but you’re kind of missing my point. I’m not saying “I post on the SDMB with the purpose of changing other people’s minds… that’s why I’m here!”. Rather, I post on the SDMB basically for fun, but I do have a perhaps naive belief that it is possible for well-meaning intelligent people to meaningfully communicate their beliefs to each other in a way that expands understanding in this increasingly divided world. For instance, in this very thread, I made a point of some sort and Bricker responded with something like “yes, that’s true, and I’ll try to keep that in mind”. (I searched and could not find the precise exchange, I hope I’m not confusing Bricker with someone else.) Now, this wasn’t some case where I BEAT Bricker. Not like we’d been debating some point and I proved myself right and he admitted it. Rather, I proposed a slightly different way of thinking about an issue that we were both very familiar with, and he (seemingly) acknowledged that my formulation of the issue gave him some insight. That, to me, is what the SDMB should be about, and I believe that that sort of communication is FAR less likely once a thread descends into “lol ur a hypocrite”.

@me

People react differently to Bricker than they do to other people because he’s Bricker, and there’s a history built up there. Part of that is due to his ideology, and part isn’t. A random stranger who comes in and starts a conservative OP will be treated differently than a random stranger who comes in and starts a liberal OP.

Not sure what your point is…

That it’s at least in part due to ideology. Sounds like you agree to that.

Right

It’s possible to make these claims, which you are free to disagree with.

That’s why (a) I added the word “truthfully” in there, and (b) was using that phrase as a commonly understood bit of conversational hyperbole. Do you in fact make the claim that Bricker’s sometimes-shabby treatment is due SOLELY to his ideology? And if not, why quibble about it?

What I was addressing was your initial claim that it was obvious that conservatives would be treated differently, versus your subsequent reluctance to “speak for all liberals” on the matter.

I don’t see any contradiction there at all. There are plenty of things that I think are quite clearly true… that doesn’t mean that all liberals will agree with me, and it CERTAINLY doesn’t give me the right to act as the mouthpiece for all liberals, or to presume how they would state a particular point. Even if another liberal agrees with me in all substantive ways about a particular issue, they might present their viewpoint about it in a totally different way than I would.