To my mind, a poster who posts crazy or idiotic things is fair game for abuse, particularly of course in the Pit and especially when the ‘Pit’ someone else - but there comes a point where it is obvious that they actually are crazy or idiotic. After that point, it is I think somewhat bad form - it can easily be seen as the Internet version of the schoolyard game of ‘taunting the retard’.
There you go with that false equivalence again.
Aswan We have evolved. We’ve evolved from stoning heretics to berating them on message boards until they give up exasperatedly and stop posting. It is an improvement, but that’s about the limit of it. The impulse is still the same, but the impulse control is better.
Townspeople with pitchforks will always be townspeople with pitchforks.
PALATR =/= stoning the heretic.
There was much evidence of a heliocentric universe before Copernicus and many cultures knew and accepted it. Oh, and I don’t think the Grand Canyon was created by glaciers.
The Grand Canyon isn’t glacial in origin.
That’s really all I have to say to the OP. KGS’s own Pit thread speaks for itself, really. Did we really need another one?
You haven’t heard of the Great Colorado River Glacier?
I still don’t think the Heliocentric Universe Theory has caught on…
Essentially it’s the same impulse just toned down.
That being said, I don’t know what PALATR stands for. I assumed it is some acronym meaning, “Abuse the heathen until he submits.”
Wow, is the OP comparing KGS to Galileo now? I just don’t know what to say. Must be that Nathaniel got to him.
“Point And Laugh At The Retard”
I voted for Reagan. You, sir, are no Reagan.
Apparently this is no place for imaginative speech either. If I refer to “sundown,” must I also explicitly add that I realize that it is not the sun going down so much as it is the Earth revolving? Sheesh.
For a group that nominally claims to be unbiased and detached, the SDMB is remarkably not so.
Perhaps another example.
(The scene: a busy street corner. A shabbily dressed man with an ill kempt beard waves his hands and wails to passersby. “The world is coming to an end. Repent! Repent!”)
You:
A) Walk by peaceably.
B) Gather a group of your friends together and hound him mercilessly. “What is your proof?” “You’re crazy!” “Imbecile, shut up!”
If you invite someone from another culture to your home for dinner and they begin to eat with their hands, do you berate them? Or do you tap the fork and knife together and show them how you use them with a friendly smile?
All I’m saying is, if you smell blood in the water and chase it, what does that make you?
And Galileo is not a bad comparison, considering the not-so-happy ending.
You don’t laugh at someone who can’t sing; lots of people can’t sing, really, nobody cares all that much. But if someone who can’t sing decides themselves to be the greatest singer in the world, despite being told otherwise, then yeah, at some point his American Idol audition is going to dissolve in hopeless laughter.
It’s not the inability to sing that makes it funny; it’s the grandiose overestimation of one’s own abilities and the self-aggrandizement that does.
:rolleyes: Yeah god knows nobody has ever piled on Der Trihs for his bullshit.
I’ve also never understood the notion that tolerance has to be all encompassing in order not to be hypocritical. If I knew someone who occasionally made a semi racist comment I’d probably let it slide. If he did so regularly or made openly racists jokes I’ll tell him to shut up about that around me. If he kept it up I’d probably stop being his friend. If he talked about kicking the shit out of a black person because he was black I’d call the cops. At what point did I become a hypocrite? Because I have a brain in my head I can tell the difference between tolerating a behavior I don’t fully understand but has no real negative effect on myself or society (homosexuality for instance) but can choose not to tolerate a behavior I don’t understand but is a hate filled stance that chooses to treat humans as lesser because of some minor difference in who they are or how they behave.
If you can explain to me how that makes it hypocritical please elaborate.
I agree with the major thrust of the OP, but I do wonder about something. I’d hate if claiming a mental illness (or development disability) was enough to give someone carte blanche around here. What if KGS had posted blatantly offensive beliefs? Like saying all white people were going to hell or that all Jews have horns and forked tongues? Would we be permitted to ridicule him in that case, or would kid gloves still be called for? Why should it matter? Mental illness can make a person say all kinds of wacky things.
I also don’t like having different standards for different people. KGS’s posts, while out in left field, aren’t that much crazier that what other posters have said in the past. I’m thinking specifically of trolls. Yet no one ever begged for special treatment on their behalf. It just seems unfair to ask the more pugnacious Dopers to give special treatment to some posters but not others. And personally, I’d hate for someone to not engage me intellectually because they think I’m “tetched” in the head. What if I hold an opinion that, while unorthodox, is NOT the result of mental misfirings and yet no one bothers to take it seriously? That strikes me as condescending.
Except that Galileo was not crazy, he was right, and KGS is wrong and full of shit.
Aswan, you are welcome to enter that thread and show the “person from another culture” how to eat with utensils. I’d be interested how long the smile stays on your face.
I just fwowed up.
I would have thought that particular puddle of sanctimony was just plain too shallow for wallowing but you managed, Awan. But perhaps you own magic Internet Diagnostic Glasses that gift you with ability to accurately diagnose total strangers’ medical conditions by peering into the pixels they leave behind on computer screens.
Lacking your piercing mystical insight, the rest of us pretty much have to take posters at their word(s). So if a poster writes flagrant crap he/she could be crazy, drunk, trolling, intellectually naive or just stupid as a box of rocks. See, we just don’t know.
It’s a burden we live with.
That figures.
No but if you say that KGS is like some scientist you are full of shit.
I don’t think most people around here claim that. We are most assuredly biased against people talking out of their asses.
Man, if there is somebody worse than you at analogy I haven’t seen them in a long time.
Ahh right.
Hhahahaa hilarious.
Yes, because posting in Great Debates is like auditioning for American Idol :D:rolleyes::smack: