Great Debates and trolls/crackpots

[FixMyIgnorance]

@brazil84

I suspect FixMyIgnorance quoted me here because I pointed out (or at least argued) in that thread that he himself was doing pretty much exactly what he is complaining about in this thread.

But that’s the problem: One man’s compelling piece of evidence is another man’s irrelevant distraction. One man’s evasive non-answer is another man’s full and complete response. It always seems like the other fellow is being a “trolling asshat” if he doesn’t accept your argument.

It’s too much to ask the moderators to judge these sorts of disputes.

It’s not about taking sides or judging which side of a dispute is “correct.” It’s about intellectually honest debate.

The reason I called you a troll is because I suspect you are just playing to plausible deniability (as I was arguing in this thread), because half of the questions you ask are indeed reasonable, but then the other half are just full-tilt full of batshit like your “evasion” claim. This way you have the freedom to be an ass by making absurd statements you know will derail things while constantly accusing me of avoiding the rest of your argument. It’s a dishonest way to try to discredit the opposing side of the debate (reminds me a lot of the tactics used on Fox News).

I don’t see how any intellectually-honest person could call what I did evasion. You claimed to want to understand a particular point better. You were given lots of elaboration and detail as I just linked to in this thread. But you claim it’s evasion because it didn’t fit within your overly simplified paradigm of “Is this pretty much it? Yes or no.”

“Yes” could be inaccurate because there was more to the position. “No” could have been inaccurate because what was there was correct, just incomplete. To resolve the ambiguity, that’s why I said “Sort of/yes and no” to explicitly answer the letter of your question while giving more detail to answer the spirit of your question.

But again, accusing people of ignoring/evading the question when they answer it and give more detail is just outright dishonest, and it’s exactly what I talk about here. It’s not a debate when you’re going to pull underhanded tactics and say one thing but do another. Don’t ask for a reasonable debate if you’re going to dick around is all I am saying. If you think someone is evading you, you typically give reasons why. You don’t just keep saying “You’re evading, you’re evading” when they continue to answer your question directly and adequately.
Also, an example of your black-and-white reasoning (i.e. traps that set up disputes no matter how they are answered):

@FixMyIgnorance

Except the common-sense conclusion is not necessarily well-grounded because “common sense” would tell most people that higher test scores always = higher chance of admission, when this is not the case.

To which you responded:

@brazil84

If you have a choice between (1) explanation A which is supported by Occam’s Razor and common sense; and (2) explanation B which is not supported by Occam’s Razor or common sense, which (if any) would you choose?

You’re trying to bin my responses into misleading categories just so you can skew the position or argue that I’m evading you if I answer differently than straight-up “yes or no” or “1 or 2,” etc. It’s dishonest.