Your opinion on this subject has already been noted multiple times in multiple threads. Have a nice day. 
Anyone who regards Pinker as the intellectual peer of the actual legitimate anthropologist is the fucking moron.
I’ll take Graeber’s work against Pinker’s pseudoscience evo-psych just-so stories any day of the week. Pinker just straight-up gets shit wrong about what he’s talking about,(whether mistakes or lies, who can tell) like characterizing several agriculturalist cultures as H-Gs, or believing iron maidens and choke pears were real medieval torture devices.
Having read a little of both Pinker and Graeber, I’m definitely voting for Graeber as the more persuasive.
And AFAICT you haven’t even tried to refute it.
Yeah, as has been said before, if someone’s actions have the same effect as someone who was trolling, they get treated the same. The mods here are pretty wise in taking this approach IMO. And there’s also the golden rule of “don’t be a jerk” to fall back on, so that you aren’t painted in a corner of having to endure someone toxic because they aren’t technically a troll.
Given the repeated conflicts caused by Magiver, I suspect this is a poster on borrowed time, but who the fuck knows. As I said, I’ve had him on ignore for years, and I’d forget about him except that I still see his name come up as a problem for other people, and I think it’s helpful to try to explain to anyone who hasn’t experienced his particular asshattery exactly what a pain he is.
Occam’s and Hanlan’s Razors are certainly not a final arbiter, but they are a good way to define the Null Hypothesis, and so establish which side has the burden of proof. If you are going to argue for an explanation that requires additional elements, in particular malice, then you are going to have to provide evidence that those additional elements are necessary to explain the observed phenomenon.
Once again - humans are systems, not single phenomena. And their interactions are even more complicated phenomena. Applying tools for solving simple syllogisms and logic problems to them just does not work.
Although if I were to go down that route, I’d point at the repeated, constant effect of this supposed pure stupidity alone and argue ex fructibus eorum and job’s a good un. Because pure stupidity doesn’t explain the constant negative effect.
Look at an actual pure stupid poster, one of our regular Old Man Yells At Clouds types - acey comes to mind - they get people annoyed at their stupidity frequently, but not always riled up the same way every time. Malice is the missing element there.
But like I said: Occam’s the wrong tool for the job, anyway. And Hanlon’s just wrong about people.
I never liked Hanlon’s razor. I don’t think it’s useful or accurate and I think people mistake pithiness for wisdom and think just because you give something a cool name it’s a rule.
He’s up to his usual blind “repeat it until it turns true” nonsense. This time in the thread from a couple years ago about the off duty pilot wasted on mushrooms who tried to switch off the engines.
This search finds the post where the thread was innocently revived by PastTense with fresh news, which then triggered a typical Magiver runaway.
Search results - Straight Dope Message Board
Yeah, I’m done there. No logic on display.
I noticed his antics over there. Once an idea pops into his tiny cranium, he cannot resist stubbornly pushing it over and over again, and when challenged on it, doubling down. Which makes me wonder, has anyone ever seen Magiver and DrDeth in the same place at the same time? 
I wonder if we could contrive for them to meet in a thread and take opposing viewpoints. :evil grin:
Brilliant! It’ll keep both of them tied up for years.
That is indeed a beautiful plot which, if executed, would greatly benefit humanity. But I don’t think Discourse (or even AWS or the giant NSA data center) has enough disk space for the ceaseless outpouring of verbal diarrhea that would result!
Yeah, infinite loops and computers aren’t a good mix.
They would both twist the words of the other, claim that they agree with each other even though it is obvious they don’t, then the both of them would flounce off in “triumph”.
Probably.
But it might give us some insight into the age-old question about what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object. Or maybe it’s more like when two immovable moving objects collide.
No, no. That’s only if it’s a logic loop. We don’t need to worry about that with DrDeth and Magiver.
I’m reminded of a ST:TOS episode where Kirk defeats the intelligent but evil computer by asking it an unsolvable math question. But this time it goes a wee bit differently. 
Moderator: OK contestants; the task before you is to compute pi to the last digit. Magiver, you won the toss backstage and will go first.
Magiver: The first digit of pi is “2”. Everyone knows that.
Moderator: DrDeth you may proceed.
DrDeth: He’s wrong. The first digit of pi is “4”. See this cite [url redacted].
Magiver: No, you don’t understand!
DrDeth: No, you’re wrong and I’ve proven it.
[for another thousand posts]
At which point poor old vBulletin would have blown a fuse. Just like Veeger. (Or was that the M-5 Multironic unit?)
It was Norman
Or Discobot