Don’t forget the irony of instantly dismissing as unworthy of scrutiny any post challenging one of the accepted memes of the SDMB, when in fact one of the foundational elements of the SD is to examine and verify claims that go against common knowledge.
I disagree with your interpretation of what is happening and what is the content of the two threads. In this country you and human_extinction are entitled to your opinion. But I wish that neither of you could or would hide your opinions that Holocaust denial creates a prima facie case and I wish and ask that you reveal your name so that we may shun you in all aspects of your existence. The behavior you defend is beyond the pale. In the US it is not a chargeable crime to deny the Holocaust. It is in some countries, but we do exclude such loonies from the public discourse, as is our right. Internet anonymity eviscerates social efforts to punish unacceptable opinions. Which yours is.
It needs to be made clear that when mountains of evidence directly support the accusation of genocide, that the implied bullshit of anonymous racists say that their math proves it impossible requires more than just an assertion. There is something called proving the burden of the assertion, and no one even attempted to meet it here.
There were several calm, measured responses in that thread. Did human_extinction respond to any of them? I pointed out in my own contribution that the energy level of the response is irrelevant to evaluating the truth of a premise, but I didn’t see human extinction offering up any support for his premise nor responding to refutations of it.
It’s fine, if a bit pointless, to simply ask “did the holocaust really happen?” and ask no follow-up questions and analyze no answers. It’s not that much of a stretch, though, to presume that human_extinction believes he already has his answer, given the nature of the cites he provided.
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Most every post I’ve seen of yours in any thread screams “arrogant idiot”.
- I didn’t start the thread instantly, I started it quite a bit after the troll thread in GD. I was in fact surprised that no one else started it.
- There is nothing ironic about dismissing Holocaust denial as unworthy of scrutiny if a prima facie case isn’t made. The burden of proving an assertion requires that the person making the unusual assertion come forth with the evidence.
- The foundational motto of the SDMB is “fighting ignorance”, not examining and verifying claims that go against common knowledge. It is common knowledge backed up all the evidence that sub atomic particles have both a location and a speed. It is mistaken. We do not examine why such claims might be true when we know that “superposition” does exist on the sub atomic level, because we know that such beliefs are held by the layperson because they do not grasp quantum theory and relate it to their experience of the world. The same is not true of Holocaust denial to the extent that the physics properties and history and historical evidence are readily available to normal human experience of the world. An educated person using the evidence available and submitting it to the standards of review developed over 2,500 years of Western Civilization cannot possibly come up with the result of Holocaust denial as a reasonable end product without being a bizarre bigot willing to ignore all the contrary evidence. The assertion of it as an innocent question was highly suspect by the OP in the GD thread, but further questioning amply demonstrated the troll nature of the OP. When one sets out to fight ignorance, one must denounce Holocaust denial, or one contributes to ignorance. Unless and until a genuine effort is made to rebut all of the evidence. That never happens.
Well, let’s look at what was actually requested:
This, to me, isn’t so much: Can you substantiate the “official” account of what happened to Nazi victims during the Holocaust? That, after all, has been substantiated by a wealth of documentary evidence and survivor/participant testimony. I don’t think anybody reasonably acquainted with this evidence would think there’s much “compelling” evidence that maybe the gas chambers were just delousing stations and the the Final Solution was just a really grueling work program. And this is because is has been decisively shown that the gas chambers were gas chambers and that the Final Solution was a program of genocide.
But to the promoters of revisionism, the evidence is beside the point. There will always be some “compelling” alternative and, if not, could you make the case for the official account again? It seeks to discredit by attrition. Few events in history have been held to such an exacting standard of proof as the Holocaust.
We have a finite time on earth and we have to choose where we direct our energies. The case has been made, and the verdict is in: we don’t have to indulge the revisionists in their games.
That’s because he’s an arrogant idiot who serves as an object lesson of the old saw that a tiny little bit of knowledge (coupled with a heaping dollop of smarm) is a very dangerous thing. He was among the late and unlamented SmashtheState’s bootlicks who defended Smashy’s wisdom and took us all to task for not embracing his ‘alternative knowlege’, or whatever. He’s a pretentious schmuck who doesn’t really know anything other than that he’d like to annoy as many Dopers as possible.
Ivy’s whole game is that he hates the Dope and Dopers, but posts here so that he can piss people off.
He’s really not worth anybody’s attention.
You keep saying this, and it keeps reminding me that you don’t really know what you’re talking about. I’m undecided whether I’m glad you’ve stopped describing “epistemology” as a mode of acquiring knowledge (Pro tip: Epistemology is the philosophical study of what knowledge is; it is no more a means of acquiring non-philosophical knowledge as aesthetics teaches us how to do sculpture). On the one hand, every time you did, I found the cluelessness grating; but on the other hand, at least it served as a prophylactic against anyone taking you too seriously.
That’s really funny, given that you seem to pay enough attention to follow me around from thread to thread, call me an idiot, and try to piss me off, and you still don’t manage to make a worthwhile point, or even to be witty.
But hey, I guess I could do worse for a peanut gallery than a obese nerdy polisci major from some shitty tier 3.
See, this is why. “In character” is, frankly, lazy and ill-considered. I say that with all due respect, because you’re one of a handful of contributors that I tend to err on the side of deferring to (usually 
), and I think of your opinions as, overall, the opposite of ill-considered and lazy. This is an exception.
Go back over my history, take your time. There’s a difference between tending to argue my opinions strongly, and in declaring a statement inarguable. Ten years of posting, find me another example of when I’ve done this.
Sorry, missed this:
And that’s sophistry. That’s argument by redefinition, like Dibble trying to separate Hiroshima and Nagasaki from WWII. The War occasioned a nearly total restructuring of American culture and society, from top to bottom. To limit the effects of the war to physical and physiological–no bricks toppled, no bodies bruised–is, well, perverse, and is as clear an indication of anything you’ve said so far that your agenda–to put me in my place for insisting on the word “inarguable”–is driving your argument, not the facts of the subject under discussion.
:rolleyes:
There’s simply no comparison between the respective global scales of the two events. (I suggest if there’s bias anywhere in this increasingly silly lollapalooza, it’s perhaps in your personal experience with Black Plague scholarship, and mine with WWII scholarship. I certainly know more about the latter than the former. But I still tend to agree, from all that I DO know, with the statements of greater experts than I on the subject; nothing that’s been said here so far has thrown any of that into question for me.)
I tell you what, Miller. I’ll do some more reading on the Plague. I’ll get back to you in few months, and see if anything in my reading convinces me that some of the most highly respected historians of the 20th Century were wrong to describe WWII as the single greatest event in the history of human civilization.
At any rate, for the sake of this discussion–extrahijackular, as it were–we can certainly agree that the scale of the event was such that one of its central components–the intended genocide of European Jews–can hardly be dismissed as a “footnote,” which is the comment that precipitated all of this.