GD is frickin' worthless, it appears

The BBQ Pit
1

I’ve only been on here for 7 months, already I see the same things over and over. The same stupid debates, going 'round in circles endlessly with nothing new interjected at any point.

I thought it was bad enough during the month or two when everything was about homosexuality.

Poster A: “Blah, blah, blah, homosexuality is bad.”
Poster B: “Blah, blah, blah, you’re a bigot.”
Poster C: “Blah, blah, blah, tolerance!”
Cue ensuing Pit thread against Poster A.

Then everything was about Christianity…

Poster A: “Blah, blah, blah, there is no God.”
Poster B: “Blah, blah, blah, Jesus loves you.”
Poster C: “Blah, blah, blah, religion is stupid, the world would be better off without it.”
Poster D: “Blah, blah, blah, forcing religion down my throat.”

Jeez, I honestly think a meeting between NARAL and National Right to Life Foundation would get more resolved than these people. All they frickin’ do in GD is repeat the same sophomoric arguments ad nauseum.

There are certainly some good debates there, when they stick to a narrow topic, unique and interesting, one not easily politicized. Anything that can easily be assigned left-right values…forget about it. How do you people who have been here for years take it? Do you just abandon GD entirely after awhile? I can see the allure of doing so. There are certain individuals, certain posters I respect, with whom I could discuss a few issues with in GD and perhaps learn something…but most of GD has turned into blatantly politicized remarks that amount to trash intellectually. Is there no hope?

2

In my humble estimation, Great Debates is not worthless. Yeah, you can read the titles of some threads and immediately predict what the op says without even reading it, who is going to ring in on either side of the issue, and who’s going to hijack/obfuscate/attack strawmen, etc. I can honestly say, however, that in the time I’ve been lurking here (since 10/01) I’ve learned more than I did in college.

My suggestion: Don’t read or post in predictable threads if predictability bothers you so much.

However, there are so many interesting and highly intelligent people here, more often than not someone will write something so compelling and enlightening that it makes wading through all the dross seem worthwhile.

3

It seems like thats the proper place for all that stuff the OP complains about…Keeps the rest of the board clean, IMHO…Though I’m known to go there every now and then.

4

Eh, pretty much. You can learn a lot in GD and a lot of posters spend a lot of time dedicating themselves to the fight against ignorance, which is after all the purpose of these boards. There will always be new ignorant people and we need the people who tirelessly explain and reason with them. Polycarp and tomndebb are invaluable in this respect - they patiently debate with people over the same points again and again because there’s always new people who need educating. I daresay a fair few have learned a lot from them and other posters and I respect them for it.

Myself, I just don’t have the patience.

And repeated threads aren’t just a GD phenomenon. How many bad driver rants have you seen in the Pit? How many “where does your username come from?” threads have you seen in MPSIMS? How many LOTR threads are there in Cafe Society at any given time? And don’t even get me started on the apparent inability of people to search the GQ archives before asking a question.

5

I’ve learned more from Great Debates than from General Questions. That’s because GQ doesn’t allow for points of view. A fact by itself is worthless; it is context that gives it meaning. It is not the fact that is interesting, but rather the interpretation of it.

“Computers are useless. They only give you answers.” — Pablo Picasso

6

That’s pretty much my perspective too. There were some fun debates on pseudo-science (“scientific” Creationism and the like) a year or so back that were pretty worthwhile though.

**

Not entirely. I skim the first page to see if there’s anything that’s different.

**

Nope. It usedta go in cycles, but this current one seems like it’ll never end.

On the other hand, th’ way I see it is this: All those topics get trapped in GD and aren’t going to spew over the rest of the Board.

If there WAS no GD, a bunch of those topics would be in GQ (and make the GQ Mods go insane), MPSIMS, IMHO and The Pit, and I’d much rather read GQ for Ignorance Eradication or the Pit for debates as it doesn’t have the silly, fake, pseudo-debate rules that GD does* (“You can insult the post but not the poster”? C’mon. It’s just an invitation to phrase insults more obliquely. How 'bout “No insults. You can’t call a post “dumb”, you need to demonstrate that it is”.)

Fenris
*Not a criticism of the Mods who enforce the rule evenhandedly.

7

I don’t get it. Current topics in Great Debates include:

[ul]
War in the Gulf
Astrology
Robot ethics
Spanking and child abuse
Language
The greatest human
Misogyny
Children and guns
Martial arts
God hates religion
Senator Hollings
The War of Northern Aggression
The Patriot Act
Wealth redistribution
Home schooling
Absolute truth
Senator Daschle versus Rush Limbaugh
The logic of Jesus’ sacrifice
The free-market
Corporate ethics
Homeland security
Al Gore’s health plan
Atheism
Islam
The Prodigal Son
The 5th amendment
The Atkins diet
Log Cabin Republicans (gay Republicans)
The national hydrogen roadmap
Single hulled tankers
Military spending
Appropriateness of jokes
Evolution and theology
Unmarried presidential candidates
Liberals and the Democrat Party
[/ul]

And that’s just page one. If that isn’t enough variety for you, why don’t you open a topic on what interests you?

8

Good call, Lib. However, I think what he’s saying is he’s tired of the fact that there is never any closure to the threads there and they often end in Flames only to begin again some time later.

Unfortunately, that is the nature of debating.

Unless God comes down a-la “The Onion” to to tell a certain person or group they nincompoops, the debate will continue unabated.

Deal with it, man.

9

What the Gorgon said.

10

Watch out for that doorknob.

11

Well, I rarely (almost never) post in GD, but not because I find the debates boring or useless. Sure, there is a lot of repetitive arguing, but those threads are easy to avoid… the reason I don’t post there much is that by the time I read an interesting thread, someone else has already said what I would have said (and usually better than I would have said it!).

If I were to take up regular posting in GD, my posts would mostly read this way: “Yeah, what poster X said! Me too!”

Ah, well! The Pit is usually more fun, anyways!:wink:

12

BWAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

(err… in light of my last post here, that is!)

13

I admit, I agree with Rex. Well, frequently, at least.

Most of the threads that tend to dominate GD are one’s that can never be resolved and, in fact, simply feature the same people making the same arguments. It’s just downright dull. I’d find it more intriguing (and worth participating in) if I thought there was any real drive for consensus or conclusion.

But if you’re in a cite-based forum and you’re on the web you’ve got to realize that there’s going to be a cite supporting anything somewhere on the web. I could probably find something supporting the assertion that mandatory pedophila would lead to world peace if I looked hard enough.

14

I dunno, I’m having fun in a GD thread now…the one about G-d not liking religion, having a discussion about the role of the Catholic church in the Early Middle Ages. (It’s quite possible no one else reading it is having fun).

GD does have some of the problems you mention, and there is a tendency for some of them to fall into ruts, but I think they’re more fun than the kind of “Why I love my cat”, and “Let me tell a board full of strangers personal stuff” threads you find in IMHO and MPSIMS. Just my opinion, of course.

15

If I cared about the incidentals in everyday existence I would go out and get a life. Instead, I care about the shit barely anyone likes to discuss in mixed company. So I hang out in GD. An interesting topic doesn’t become less interesting to me because closure seems impossible. In fact, attempting to reach closure makes the discussion that much more interesting.

PErhaps you should start a debate about why closure is impossible in such topics. Then we could get rid of GD altogether. :wink:

16

Well, if GD were for the purpose of arriving at specific answers agreed to by everyone for the great issues of all time, then maybe Rex Dart would have a point.

Myself, I see it as a forum where I can express my own perspectives on those issues, and learn from reading the intelligently written posts of others who disagree with me.

To give a couple of precise, clear examples:
[list][li]A blow-up between me and Libertarian nearly two years ago, in which, when the smoke cleared and one could parse the arguments clearly, he made the libertarian point that one’s Christian duty (a value we both share) to aid the poor and downtrodden does not necessarily (and in his opinion should not) lead to the use of government to impose that duty on the populace at large, whether or not they feel that duty (as Christians, or as Jews or Moslems holding to similar authoritative teachings) or the related humanist duty to help others. This was a wake-up call to me.[/li][li]A recent debate here in the Pit on the killing of a transgendered (M2F) person in which I got a great deal better perspective on the worldview of a transgendered person (courtesy of several board members, in particular Kelly) and also how a sincere person can hold to the somatic view of gender identity (kudos to Shodan for making the case for that POV).[/li][li]Another Pit debate on gay marriage in which Joe Cool made the case for the conservative view that two gay people wanting to form civil unions were not contemplating “marriage” in the way he understood it, and that he could support a civil union law that did not imply such a relationship was a “marriage” in explicit use of such a term. I had the distinct privilege and pleasure of being in a position to translate the differing ways in which Joe Cool and Gobear were using the term to each other, with the result that an apparent impasse between them was resolved into a clear understanding that they did not in fact disagree over political issues, merely over differing religious concepts.[/li]Scylla’s ongoing patient and clear perspectives on why a clear-thinking man might be led to vote for Republican tickets

17

The best and perhaps only purpose the debates of the type mentioned in the OP have are to reduce the posters’ arguments to their core differences of opinions. Those core differences will rarely change.

18

I think the debates that have no resolution are fascinating; these are, generally, the greatest dichotomies of our current societies, and seeing each side explain its points in detail is highly educational.

Where else are you going to find people discussing the finer points of politically sensitive subjects in great detail, in a forum which encourages putting thought and research into each and every comment?

It’s a place to learn about other people’s perspectives, to find out how other people think; what they believe, and why they believe it. It seems to me that that’s an invaluable method of fighting ignorance.

19

Would a moderator please close out that [list] coding? Thank you.

20

Rex;

I dunno. There was this whole series of threads. One was 9 pages, another 5 or six long. A couple more.

Elucidator and I got into it in a pretty serious fashion.

It had all the good stuff. We accused each other of lies, stupidity, arrogance, prejudice the whole nine yards. It got ugly. It was also huge fun.

The neat thing was that after 23 pages across several threads, including some in the Pit, we actually came to a specific agreement.