Actually, we do have a provision in the forum rules for factual threads.
I think that’s a splendid idea.
~Max
Except people are saying that he keeps making the same claims even after being refuted. You are not required to keep refuting it over and over again once your point has been made. Just because he has the last post on the subject doesn’t mean he’s “won” the argument.
You and others keep assuming that readers can’t judge the quality of information provided in the thread. If SayTwo makes a claim, and fifteen people refute it, then I doubt anyone is going to decide he “won” the argument just because he made the last post. Give readers a little credit.
Same claims, different threads, I assume.
~Max
Both same and different threads, I believe.
First off: I wish I could give people the benefit of the doubt on COVID information. But we’ve seen how incredibly stupid people are on this. I have no faith whatsoever anymore about any of this. People look at aesthetics, and the guy who outlasts everyone else looks like the guy who won. It’s a common strategy to spread misinformation.
Second, I’m not talking about things debunked earlier in the thread, necessarily. I’m talking about stuff debunked anywhere in the forum. Once debunked, the false information serves no more purpose to show that it’s false (the reason you said it might be useful) . That’s been done. There’s no reason to bring it up again.
I’m also arguing that, if someone keeps posting the same debunked information, that poster is clearly not engaging in good faith. A good faith debater may occasionally miss a post, but, as long as they see it, they’re going to address the issues rather than pretend it never happened. It suggest the goal is to impede discussion using the gish gallop fallacy, or just to troll.
My proposal for dealing with this actually involves a combination of what you guys have proposed. We can tag a thread as factual. If information that has already been debunked thoroughly is put forth, then that would be false information, which you said we can report.
I think that’s a better solution than telling us to just not do anything. It’s just not going to happen, because this issue is so important.
Can you provide an example of SayTwo posting the same debunked information twice? and where it was debunked?
~Max
I give most of our readers more credit than that. Anyone who is that stupid isn’t going to be able to evaluate information at all.
It is also possible to be outdated. Covid advice changes. Originally the CDC poo pooed the idea of regular people wearing masks, as the mask- especially improperly worn and unlikely to be N95- was not that much protection to the wearer.
Then it was found that masking, even just plain old two layer cotton masks- protect others from you.
Which is exactly why they would see the guy who outlasted everyone else as the winner.
I would love to live in the world you describe, but it’s not the one I see. One of the reasons this misinformation spreads is the lack of critical thinking ability.
Also, does the fact you only disagreed with that one part mean you see my point with the rest–e.g. that reposting the same debunked information is clearly disingenuous debating? Or that information that has already been debunked is clearly false and can be reported as such, per your suggestion?
(On, and @Max: I’m still arguing in policy mode, not specifics. I’m under the impression that SayTwo has done this, based on what others have said. But I’ve not myself observed it. I’m unfortunately not a poster who is in the position to be able to stand debunking his stuff–I’m one who was chased away. If you want to know why, check out the SayTwo Pit thread. And, yes, the personal thing that happened is part of it, and why I’m so vociferous on this issue.)
(I don’t want to use a tragedy in my life as a card to try and win an argument.)
Comments in Pit thread appropriate for here.
Dr Fauci originally downplayed masks to avoid a shortage of them for medical personnel.
July 24 2020
At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci originally discouraged mask-wearing by the public because he was concerned about PPE availability for health-care workers.
We do still have a rule against being a jerk, don’t we? Linking to infowars is a jerk move in-and-of itself.
The hell it does.
Is this the justification the mods have had for allowing open racism, open transphobia, open bigotry for all these years? It would explain so much.
There’s nothing false about that argument. Allowing is a kind of support. See my sig. The only way this would not be true would be if the board was unmoderated.
Either I had forgotten this or I didn’t read the forum rules well enough - mea culpa - but as it goes, this is more or less what I did anyway. I called the thread Vaccine refuser data thread and I concluded the OP thus:
-thinking to myself at the time, good luck with that. I accept that there will be a certain amount of discussion, on and not-so-on topic.
However, here’s the thing - when it starts getting out of hand, how do you “enforce” these “rules”? If I tell a poster they’re drifting from the intent of the OP, that’s junior modding. If it gets reported to the mods - well, that seems to be what’s happened here. As I said up-thread, I declined to engage, ignored it and hoped it would go away.
Guidance on how the rule will be enforced would be useful here; it seems to me that I (fortuitously) did enough to qualify that thread under the GQ-like clause.
j
I don’t see any reports of that thread for the past 4 days or so at least. I’m not going to go back and sort through it now, but given the OP feel free to report any posts that you believe are inappropriate (using “Something Else” to indicate the reason). Going forward, I’ll moderate it to GQ standards. Opinionating can be modded as a hijack. However, mind that this cuts both ways, and both sides of the discussion will be modded the same way. I have tagged that thread as “factual.”
If someone makes a claim that science is coming around to a consensus then he might be asked for examples of scientists or scientific bodies which validate that claim. That’s not the same thing as asking him for examples of countries which back up that science (more below).
But here’s the point. You quoted the exchange between BB and ST as an example of ST’s poor debating techniques, when in that particular exchange it was BB who was engaging in poor debating techniques and ST was on solid ground. What you’re doing now is shifting to other supposed problems with ST’s position in that thread. But that would not validate your original post here, in which you claimed that ST’s refusal to comment on the specifics of school closures in a couple of countries picked by BB were “bad argument form”.
What you’ve really demonstrated instead is that when a poster is outside the mainstream then people - you, in this case - engage in all sorts of sloppy reasoning to pick faults in his arguments and style and brand the guy a troll etc., and the reverse is true for people who are in line with the mainstream.
To which I’m adding that the underlying respective levels of support is very frequently a direct result of the makeup of this MB and nothing more.
Greetings . . .
& thanks for the reminder of the thread I started . . .
.
Question: in light of
[links removed by moderator]
Do you believe that airliners were used as weapons on 9/11/2001 ?
I’d say this should be fun, but those stodgy mods probably won’t less us enjoy this.