Thank you for your response. It’s all so clear to me now.
I don’t know about Duke beyond the fact that he’s a white supremacist, but I don’t know of a time when Gore engaged in “significantly dishonest conduct.” But it’s sort of beside the point. We both agree that a credibility incentive does not ensure 100% honesty. It is a greater or lesser incentive depending on the institution and the context, and I think it is a particularly strong incentive for many parts of the UN.
Ok fine I think I understand your point now. For what it may be worth, I agree with you and I think Liberal (perhaps he ought to change his nick to Libertarian) is wrong.
Oh, fuck off. You deliberately introduced an utterly fallacious comparison with a completely unconnected event. I’m not going to read your own stupidities back to you. We are intelligent human beings, capable of applying independent reason to each issue (well, I am; I have severe doubts about you). Conflation of two utterly separate issues merely makes you look desperate. But then, given that you’re plainly using the AIDS numbers as a proxy issue for your own dire little efforts to tilt against wind farms, this should surprise no one.
No. If there is a plausible reason why their earlier statements might have been in error, absent a nefarious motive, it’s reasonable to assume in the absence of other evidence that they were not deliberately lying. And yes, the difficulties of tracking AIDS numbers on the subcontinent and in rural Africa are so manifest and obvious that it is entirely plausible to me that overestimates of the magnitude made are not surprising. Unlike you, I’m willing to entertain evidence to the contrary, but you have utterly failed to supply any.
Now, should you believe that the UN were engaging in deliberate overstatement of the problem to further their own (entirely unexplained) ends, feel free to do so. Otherwise, you are simply whistlin’ Dixie.
Let’s all pretend he didn’t say that. Avoid the hijack, and let him take his own lumps, whatdya say?
ETA: in reference to post # 83
Whatever.
Please show me where I claimed that “everyone who opposes AIDS must therefore have opposed invading Iraq”
Of course, humans are fallible. Some to a greater extent than others. And groups of fallible humans can be even worse. But I’m wondering why, out of the many targets you could choose to set your sights on, you seem to have a hard on for attacking AIDS researchers and Climate Scientists. It’s kind of bizarre.
Well, I haven’t posted a lot on AIDS - but obviously I post a lot about “climate science.”
The reason is that I’m fascinated by popular madness, delusions and hoaxes.
Why haven’t you dogged on the theory of evolution? You don’t seem to have a problem with that, but surely all the scientists who stand behind it must be doing so for financial and prestigious purposes?
LilShieste
I’m pretty much satisfied that the theory of evolution is not a hoax or the result of a popular delusion.
… ohh ok. Yeah, me too. <wink> <wink>
LilShieste
Whatever.
Permit a bit of hyperbole, would you? No, you didn’t directly say that. You implied a strong correlation between the two, and thus attempted to conflate two utterly separate issues. One has nothing to do with the other. The only connection is that you are a moron who persistently refuses to even countenance debate on the topic of your own choice, preferring instead to engage via ever more labyrinthine proxy topics, to be exchanged at will as soon as anything resembling lucid debate confronts you. Why might this be? Golly gosh, it’s tricky to figure out.
Answer the question about why the UN corrected its own figures, if it is so eager to lie. Answer the question about the apparent ease of data-gathering in sparse, rural, adverse environments. Answer any of the points about the scientific process. In fact, if you could address anything to do with the topic in hand - the one that you brought up, remember - that would be just swell.
Or, we can continue to play this pointless nitpicking game about your brainfuckingly stupid “point” regarding WMDs. It makes you look like an entirely dishonest, intellectually bankrupt mental midget, but again, this is entirely consistent with just about every post you’ve made on this board to date.
I apologise that we’ve not all fallen to our knees, wailing that the UN has betrayed us and wishing for 6 million extra people to die horribly so that we can prove global warming is true. Unfortunately, you see, we’re not idiots.
Haha. Not unlike the UN.
But anyway, I won’t permit it. In the sense that I’m not going to engage in that sort of a debate with you. It’s hard enough to discuss things here without people openly lying about other peoples’ positions.
If you would like to have a serious discussion about the implications of this recent revelation from the UN, feel free to open a GD thread. If you promise not to engage in “hyperbole” and the like, I promise to try to answer your questions.
I beg your pardon? You open a thread about a topic (who cares where?), and then refuse to discuss anything about it, save for advancing your tawdry little arguments from incredulity? Fuck that, mate. If you want to accuse the people who are trying to eradicate a pretty hideous disease from some of the most vulnerable populations on the planet of lying to further their own nefarious (and utterly unexplained) aims, then you’d better have something to back it up with save your own paranoia. And you’d better be prepared to actually debate on the topic of your own choosing, rather than attempting to spin things off into a spiral of unconnected bullshit. Why should it be my job to examine a claim you can’t even be bothered to justify with anything more than handwaving? You haven’t bothered to address a single one of the relevant points made to you here; why would I assume you’d be any less of a dickhead in GD?
I say again: fuck that. If you’re not simply trolling, bring us something to talk about. You. Yes, you. Y’know, you being the person who wanted to talk about this 'n all.
Well, sure, he wanted to talk about it. What makes you think he wanted to listen?
While I can accept having discussion about the topic in this thread (since yes, I chose the forum but interesting questions have been raised that I’d rather discuss elsewhere), I can’t accept your “hyperbole.”
I am happy to discuss the topic in this thread with people who are prepared to discuss it in a reasonable manner. That means your “hyperbole” (lying about what I have said) is unacceptable to me.
I am completely and utterly bewildered as to why anyone bothers to respond to him at this point. It’s very clear what his pattern is, yet people continue to feed him. Well, perhaps it keeps them amused, rather like when I said, “Nixon sucks,” to my father.
Well damn said Lib, and it’s not unexpected to see you get piled on for that post here at the Dope. It’s the blinders. They refuse to comprehend or even entertain the subtle point you are making.
Not as good as when he snuck “exaggerated” in the place of “overestimated”. That was pretty slick.