I think this is a terrific site, way the best I’ve come across. Indeed, I have to take a vow not to access it at the weekends, otherwise I’ll become an addict.
But one small plea. Can folk assume that others are as smart as them. It would I think help to keep the threads focused and directed. Of course, it could be just me whose heckles are raised when I’m told to go and read this or that (and my instinctive reaction, immature I know, is to shoot back with a reading list of my own), or when I’m told I’m not a hopeless case…yet. But on the offchance that I’m not the only one, could I make a plea for people to think twice before doing the patronising thing??
BTW, the only thing that gives me the creepd about this site is the “Fighting ingorance since 1973” tagline. The “It’s taking longer than we thought” bit is even worse. Need I expalin why? Hope not.
I suspect this is in the wrong forum, but what the heck. This is the only forum I use, so I put it here.
Well, this is the problem with communication. If you assume other people are as smart as you, you assume that they know what you know, and you just stand around being shocked that they didn’t arrive at the same conclusions as you did.
If two people on opposite sides of an issue are trying to explain themselves to each other, they need to do it via layers. Eventually, they find the root of their disagreement - they are looking at something fundamental from different points of views.
Fir instance, say… someone believes that the US was attacked on 9/11 for no good reason at all. Another person believes that there were many valid reasons for decades that were ignored. The first person believes that there are no justification, because it is just how business is done, afterall. This is a fundamental difference in international politics.
Now, when the two people go to talk about Iraq, they are obviously going to conflict, and they’ll eventually end up explaining themselves to the point of hyperventilation if they assume the other person is “smart” (AKA, knows what they know).
Another example is my recent thread on the Sea People. I presented what I knew from my cursory search for information on them. Tamerlane came by and clarified many things about the situation, including how two different names for the same group of people didn’t make sense from my point of view. Until he “patronized” me and explained this rather basic mistake, I wasn’t looking at the situation with a full basket of apples, if you get my meaning. But since he’s such a nice and knowledgable guy, I didn’t take it the wrong way.
Sorry, since I think I’m one of the people this is directed to. My aim is not to patronise.
The point is, you see the occasional idiot here who just wants to push their own agenda. They’re not interested in having a good honest-to-God debate. You are obviously not one of these people, as you appear to know how to argue honestly, admit mistakes, reframe the debate etc.
Since you seem reasonable, but have some unsteady assumptions, we point you towards somewhere where these assumptions are rebutted, by good, well-informed writers. A case in point was the assumption that man is descended from chimpanzees. No offence meant, but that’s a pretty basic error that we shoudl fix up before we go on with the whole faith-vs-evidence debate we were having. That’s all we’re trying to do when we send you to talk-origins or something similar.
Fair enough re the referral to the website, lambchops, but I hope it is generally agreed that there is no one repository of the truth. And evolution has not been falsified, I’m sure, but that may have something to do with the fact that the tests it has been subjected to have not been severe.
The fact that there are so many different handles on this site, added to the fact I haven’t been around long enough to have sorted you all out means that I’m not targeting individuals. However I still think there’s always the danger of an attitude problem with such sites, and it’s a pity that such an attitude is enshrined in the fabric of the site. No one ever mentioned this before? The we’ll-straighten-you-out-in-the-end mentality.
The tagline describe The Straight Dope (particularly Cecil’s column, but the board as well) perfectly. Not to seem patronising, but you seem to be working under the popular connotation of “ignorance”, rather than the actual definition: ignorance
\Ig"no*rance, n. [F., fr. L. ignorantia.] 1. The condition of being ignorant; the want of knowledge in general, or in relation to a particular subject; the state of being uneducated or uninformed.
“Fighting Ignorance” means “trying to educate and/or inform”. I don’t see how that’s offensive.
I recognise that there’s still the possibility for divergent opinions, once all the facts are in front of you. Re evolution, I’m not sure if all the facts are in front of you yet.
Let’s make sure we’ve got the facts ironed out first. If you have them all in front of you and choose to value your religious conviction over science, that’s your prerogative.
I guess that intellectual arrogance is always the danger when you’ve got a lot of smart people complimenting each other on how smart they are, but on the other hand, those who become too big for their boots or rely on this arrogance rather than the facts get shot down pretty quickly. All the inflated egos can quickly cancel each other out, so you get a kind of concordia discordium, an agreed middle ground between two arguments that serves as the basis of further discussions.
Otherwise, we make a joke of it. That’s what the motto’s about.
I think we have the same definition of facts here, but if you see someone post a fact that you think is debatable, feel free to refute it.
I’m in a different country with a different culture than the plurality of posters here (plurality in US, me in Australia), I don’t see any difference between my definition and that of the others. You seem to be a native English speaker - seriously, what’s the problem?
Don’t get your reference about the movie. What do you mean?
I wasn’t referring to the definition of ‘fact’, but about whether a statement fulfilled the criterion to be called one.
“Don’t get your reference about the movie. What do you mean?”
Well, I don’t want to name names or appear immodest, but a good discussion needs strong protagonists on easch side. Like a movie needs a strong villain. Think ‘Die Hard’, think Alan Rickman.
Well I’m a Brit and playing villains is so much more fun, so I guess that makes me Hans Gruber (if that’s the name of Rickman’s character). I’m just a bit concerned about my sidekick…
Thing to remember about this board is that it’s a perpetual arms race where the smart-assed seek to outdo each other in forming the perfect quip that displays megacool irreverance and megabig knowledge.
It doesn’t always work, though. On at least two occasions, Cecil himself made quips that contained factual errors (“If ignorance were cornflakes, you’d be General Mills” and “This whole thing is so ironic it’s an instant cure for pernicious anemia”) though we survived.
Anyway, if you want enforced niceness, I’m sure there are plenty of nanny-boards that might suit you.
I was gonna point this out. This whole attitude you display, bodswood, gives me no cause for patience with you.
You KNOW that what you’re doing is probably wrong (i.e., you KNOW that you’re probably putting the thread in the incorrect forum), but you can’t be bothered to find out which forum is correct, so you do it anyway. And that right after a post in which you ask me to assume that you’re as smart as I am.
I put my posts in the right forum. So if I assume you’re not stupider than men, then I gotta assume you must be misposting out of intellectual laziness.
When I tell you to read certain websites before coming back to discuss tem, that’s because you’re displaying ignorance of the very subject matter you’re trying to discuss. Ignorance is nothing to be ashamed of.
But you can’t be bothered to bone up on your basic science: instead, you complain (in the wrong forum, knowingly) about being told to do so.
Willful ignorance and intellectual laziness ARE worth being ashamed of.
Oh, Dork, lighten up a shade. Actually, the need to avoid patronising others is especially relevant to a debate forum. The fact that the mods haven’t moved it suggests they understand that too.
At the risk of being patronizing, Here is another reading assignment from Talk Origins.
You may or may not agree that all of the 29+ tests have been sufficiently rigorous, but you cannot actually claim that no one has performed falsifiable tests against Evolutionary Theory.
