It would be a fun experiment, though. Suppose the mods turned off poster names in GD for a weekend. It would be interesting to see how we saw longtime posters’ arguments when not attached to those posters’ names. We could have a game thread about guessing who the OP of each new thread was.
Regards,
Anonymous
It sounds to me like you are confusing having a poor memory for being able to separate the post from the poster.
You’re not pulling the wool over my eyes, Shodan.
<defensive response> I actually think I have a fairly good memory - I’m just selective about what I bother to fill it up with.
I don’t think it’s necessarily always easy; I do think it’s always a choice.
As somebody has noted, anonymity does not foster civilized conversation on the internet.
It might be feasible to submit a GD topic laying out an initial thesis anonymously (it could be sent to a Mod to post).
D’oh. Of course that’s the joke you were already making. I hate it when that happens.
Regards,
Even Less Bright
Ah…well that’s quite different then. My bad.
I think so. I have tried starting threads in the past when I knew there was quite vigorous debate on a subject, but where I was generally underinformed on the whole topic and did not occupy either side, position or strong views; what I had hoped for was to hear arguments and be persuaded one way or another, or to appreciate the complexity and unresolvability of the argument. It didn’t work out like that.
This is a small board, and it’s entirely possible for coincidences to happen.
For example, it’s possible that, due to pure chance, the only people here who advocate for certain views are complete assholes. Is that the fault of the views, that the only Dopers who take up their banner are assholes? Possibly, if there’s no way to defend that view without being an asshole, but you have to examine the view closely to come to that conclusion. The chance makeup of the confluence of people here doesn’t prove the point.
There’s a way around this, or at least as good of a way as I’ve ever heard: Steelmanning, the opposite of strawmanning. When you strawman a position, you make it weaker than it should be, and attack that weakened version. When you steelman a position, you make it as strong as you can, and then attack that strengthened version.
This doesn’t necessarily mean the steelman wins. Some positions are losers, and remain losers even when steelmanned to the furthest honest extent. However, if you think the steelmanned version is laughably weak, you probably owe it to yourself to do a little more research on what the supporters of that position say in its defense.
We can’t really practice steelmanning on the SDMB because Devil’s Advocacy in GD is trolling, correct? Like, I couldn’t take a radical anti-gun-control position, defend it to the best of my ability, and remain a member in good standing, now that you’ve all read what I’ve posted in the Pit the last few days, right? So that could be the opening for the purely anonymous GD, or some other forum: Encourage posters to take steelmanned positions in debate, in a forum with no publicly-apparent usernames, so nobody’s “trolling” by our definition, but higher-than-normal debate standards, so people actually do steelman or, at least, do their damndest to put forth the best versions of positions they actually do hold.