Right, except for how there are several obvious “scientific” racists here, festering away, and they haven’t been “squashed” or anything. They’re still here just “asking questions” and engaging in “reasoned debates”.
I mean, this place pretty clearly doesn’t have a good track record at getting rid of people like that and the result is that it’s a place where, to this day, it’s apparently up for debate whether people with certain skin colors are inherently stupid. It seems obvious, given that track record, that this place would do better to abandon this silly “truth will out” nonsense and just acknowledge that awful people with awful viewpoints exist, and kick them out, rather than engaging the thousandth white supremacist in debate and pretending like you’ll collectively manage to debate the Nazi out of him.
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But insta-banning them won’t make them or their ideas go away.
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Uh, of course it’ll make them go away. It won’t make every neo-Nazi ever go away, and it won’t make any of them rethink their ideas, but neither will “debating” at them, and the banning approach involves a lot less pointless arguing with Nazis. Because it ensures that they go away.
Arguing with True Believers, whether Nazis, commies, fundy theists, fundy atheists, radical vegans, or rabid carnivores, will never persuade them to change their views and will only one time in a million persuade them that their opponents are not incarnate evil.
However, demonstrating the errors in which True Believers engage will persuade undecided folks on the sidelines that the extreme position of the True Believers is too far off the charts for a reasonable person to hold them. Shutting down True Believers for simply mindlessly grasping their belief sends a message to those on the sidelines that we are unable to fight them with facts and that they must have some Truth of which we are afraid.
I don’t see the point in banning anyone for being stupid or closed minded, regardless which topic their fixation supports.
I cast my pitiful insignificant vote against banning denialists of any stripe, short of intensely vile hatemongering which I can’t define, but which (like a certain Supreme Court Justice) I am confident our hard-working Mod overlords can recognize if they see it.
Once started down the ban road, we’ll have to eliminate AIDS denialists, vaccine denialists and all the loony-tunes whom it is such good sport (and occasionally even educational) to debunk, point fingers at and laugh.
Do you really, honestly believe there are a lot of people on the fence about (to continue with my example) scientific racism, and they’re waiting to be convinced by the evidence? Consider the fact that absolutely zero of the world’s current scientific racists came to that conclusion due to fairly and honestly evaluating the evidence.
If you guys just want easy arguments that you can feel good about yourselves for winning, then go for it, and award yourselves your gold stars when you fail to change any minds at all. In my experience it’s more satisfying to debate someone who actually came to their opinion honestly because then sometimes they actually concede when confronted with superior arguments. Whereas Holocaust deniers, scientific racists, and their ilk never will.
If your goal is to have a place where decent discussions are possible – and especially where good faith debaters might actually learn something and improve themselves in the process – I can’t think of a more obviously correct course of action than banning people for being stupid or closed-minded.
What I do find are people who have come to conclusions because they were not presented the facts or were presented a slanted view of the facts. Such folks, (and there are a couple of posters on the SDMB who came here with that sort of background in science who have changed their views in light of the facts), are sincerely looking for the facts and we provide those facts.
Shutting down discussion and banning True Believers is more likely to be interpreted by those who have been misled as us being afraid of “the Truth.”
If you think arguing with the hydras that are most True Believers is easy, you probably have never actually engaged in a discussion with one. It is mostly frustrating. Yes, it might be more fun to have a genuine debate with someone who arrived at a Creationist perspective “rationally,” but the odds on finding such a “rational” True Believer are pretty long against.
Even moreso with a Holocaust Denier. However, they generally arrive with an entire list of lies–all the more reason why we should take the time to debunk them rather than let anyone actually believe that they are not lying or that we fear “the Truth.”
And if we decided that your attitude was either close-minded or stupid. . . ?
Decent discussions are always possible. Not with every poster on every topic, but with enough posters on enough topics to remain interesting. And banning people for having wrong-headed beliefs prevents us from encountering the current crop of errors or lies. On the other hand, engaging them gives us the opportunity us do the research to discover the source of their lies to more easily debunk them.
We’re not actually trying to debate with Neo-nazis and all that, since Lord knows there’s no way anyone can penetrate their concrete skulls, but often, we let them spew, make fun of them (not the same as debating, obviously), and let them flame out until they get themselves banned. Same result, takes only a bit longer, and provides the board with a fair deal of amusement along the way.
And even though we don’t instantly ban people for being stupid or closed-minded and prefer to give them enough rope to hang themselves with, decent discussions and enlightening debates do in fact happen here.
I agree with you that a true, hard-boiled Holocaust denier will never see the light, regardless of how convincing and rational your arguments might be. But consider the ‘up and coming/aspiring/interested in exploring’ Holocaust denier. They could very well be reading here …probably stumbling upon the SDMB after typing 'proof that the holocaust was a hoax" into a search engine.
Think about it. Young people today get a lot of their information from the internet and even the ‘probably will become/odds stacked against him’ future Holocaust denier (scientific racist, etc) out there in the world today will eventually do a google search at some point. Wouldn’t it be better for that not-fully-cooked brain to happen upon some rational arguments that maybe, possibly give him cause to question what he has learned before becoming a fully-cooked, closed minded idiot?
