In any case I suspect the higher instance of teen marriage was an effect, not a cause.
The out would be that SA talked of teen pregnancy while the Guttmacher Institute talks of teenage birth rates. The lowering of birth rates can easily be explained by asserting that the average teenage girl has at least three abortions a year.
It can also be explained by *asserting *that death rays from Mars affect fertility in teenage girls.
You’ve just proven that absolutely nothing can be discovered by scientific research: only opinions and *assertions *are relevant.
The easiest thing in the world is to play devil’s advocate: piling on more questions is not the same thing as discovering an answer.
(And once again we’re not talking about the actual topic of debate; we’re sinking in a swirling mire of details being raise by people who have not read, let alone conducted, the research.)
The last couple posters, and SA, seem to believe that “Here’s what I, a layperson, don’t understand about this study–as an abstract concept, mind you; I haven’t actually read it” is exactly the same as “I have conclusively disproven scientific fact.”
Yeah, but I think Kal was kidding.
Sorry if that’s the case; it’s exactly what SA would’ve said so I took it as taking his side.
Point being, scientists don’t just publish conclusions: they show their work. All SA ever does is come up with some irrelevant sophistry that allows him to refuse to believe the conclusion, without ever actually checking the work. He calls this “debunking.”
(my bolding)
Sir, I tip my hat to you. Even Andy Kaufman could not have sustained his act this long.
Unless of course, you are Andy Kaufman, in which case I am speechless.
I’m not sure about that. He tried to explain the difference in murder rates between the bustling, urban metropolises of Mississippi and the bucolic wilds of Massachusetts. I pointed out the one tiny flaw in his argument. He called me dishonest, but next time he repeated that argument, he left those states out.
Just gone, like magic, like sleight-of… Aw, never mind.
OK.
I got it.
Starving Artist: I understand and respect your desire to not engage in debate. Really.
But in my view, if you’re not going to engage in debate, you ought not to post in Great Debates. While it’s not mandated that formal debate rules are in use, the fact of the matter is that the general expectation is that discourse will be debate-like.
So if someone says something absurd, or offers a cite that says something absurd, it’s not sufficient to say, “I know that’s absurd, and I’m not going to debunk it any further than that.” As satisfying a response as it is, in GD it simply doesn’t cut the mustard. The expectation at a minimum is that you can provide a contrary citation, or point out the specific flaws in the cite you are dismissing.
Let’s consider this “book larnin’” business.
The accusation was not technically accurate. But it arose from the very behavior I’ve described above: confronted with a citation, you didn’t refute it with a contrary cite or describe the problems with its methodology that led you to believe it was suspect. As obvious as its being suspect was to you, it was not obvious to your audience.
I get that you’re not interested in taking those steps, and that’s obviously up to you. But it is the expectation of GD as a forum, and in my view you have no room to complain if you particpate in the forum but fail to follow its norms.
Some of you, only a few, I’m sure, but some…some of you, like me, know people who have actually had some contact with what we refer to as our “criminal justice” system. Well enough, at least, to gaze in wonder at someone who suggests that we coddle our criminals, that we are too easy, too “permissive”.
Are we “punitive”? Well, that depends, doesn’t it, on whether the subject is an actual denizen of the “criminal culture”. It simply wouldn’t do to apply the same standards to white men in nice suits who may have, technically, “stolen” huge sums of money, or to have “violated” the laws that keep us from drinking their poison and breathing their industrial farts.
Punishment is for criminals, they go to a place that mocks Darwinism, animal savagery is merely mindless, robotic. Human savagery is sentient, planned, ofttimes efficient, more often haphazard. The worst people thrive in prison, they get the respect and fear denied them elsewhere, they thrive where violence and fear are survival skills. And of course they feed upon the petty criminals, the losers, the small time dealers, who, if they don’t already know how much we hate them, are soon to get the lesson.
But punishment implies some rude sense of justice, if your grandson steals a nickel from your purse, you don’t break his fingers. But some dumb ass butt scratcher who can’t even shoplift without getting caught…he goes to Hell. And we nod with stern satisfaction at justice served.
Charles Manson didn’t just happen, we built Charles Manson, layer by layer, year by year. The wonder isn’t that he happened, the wonder is that there aren’t more of him.
But enough. What is this, really, but merely another galaxy of ignorance SA strings together like a daisy chain of dumb.
Uh, Charles Manson: not a good example. The dude’s insane. His criminal impulses came from within; he only used the trappings of society to give them voice.
Anyway, people who end up committing the only kind of crime that SA acknowledges (i.e., crime not committed by rich white men) are more subject to the kind of societal pressures that encourage such behavior than those who don’t. In other words, while I won’t go so far as to fulfill SA’s ludicrous caricature by saying that all crime is a product of society, I will *assert *that such an environment is surely not irrelevant.
SA believes in a criminal type; the Victorian idea that certain people, no matter what the context you place them in, will commit violent crimes. That there’s no more to it than that; there is no cause and effect external to the criminal’s own character.
This suggests that if you go back in time and birth-switch a thug and a theologian, their future life choices will make the switch with them. Now I’m not suggesting that we can categorically state that absolutely no part of one’s character is hereditary. We don’t know for sure. But even very strong proponents of such “nature over nurture” positions acknowledge that there’s a balance between the two. In other words, that environment is NOT irrelevant.
All except SA, of course, who believes that all crime is nature, and nurture–i.e., the societal factors that everyone else on the planet believes contribute to the formation of character–is wholly irrelevant.
I’m thinking now of an over-used cliche… a pissy command that some cranky, old geezer would shout at a group of kids…
But… I’m scratching my head just a bit here…
Should we all get the hell off Starving’s lawn?
Or should he get the hell off of ours?
I love the way an OP about the silliness of people trying to engage SA has been met with 8 pages of people trying to engage SA.
As George Carlin said, “At least when I’m through masturbating, I have something to show for it.”
Wait! I’ve got it!
What if we all agreed to collectively share one great big Lawn? We would all contribute to its upkeep; and we would all enjoy its lush, green, goodness! Sure, there might be some tiny logistical problems to work out; we’d have to determine who pays for the seeding, does the weeding, etc.
Conversely, we’d also need to decide who gets to play frisbee, have a picnic, organize a concert, etc., and when and where on the lawn they get to do it.
But don’t worry! I’ve already given this some thought and I believe I have an elegant, equitable solution. We’ll just ask each person to work and pay for supplies according to his ability, and allocate usage of the Lawn to each person according to his needs!
Rather seminal thinking, if I do say so myself. Thinking right out-of-the-box, I am. Revolutionary, actually!
:smack:
Shit… I guess that probably wouldn’t fly too well with ol’ Starving. Damn. Back to the drawing-board…
Mr. Engels, come here. I need you!
Lots of people in the “Let’s pit Dopers who engage in debate with Starving Artist” thread engaging in debate with Starving Artist.
Do you have anywhere else to be?
Maybe not, but it adds a much-needed boost to my recent hare-brained theory that elucidator is Larry ‘Doc’ Sportello.
Eh, I’m like Miracle Whip – I don’t take no orders from anybody. Not lissener with his “Don’t talk to Starving Artist” orders, not society, nobody.
Anyone who reads even one page of Thomas Pynchon’s writing knows that he is a superb craftsman and a brilliant novelist. Which is fortunate, because I’ve never been able to read two.