Moderators seem biased [Moved to the Pit for continued inter-poster bickering]

The BBQ Pit
121

Even Damuri has admitted that I’ve conceded errors when faced with actual facts. I’ve already admitted that I was ignorant of the 2008 SC decision (which you were also ignorant of and which constitutes the only relevant piece of basic knowledge, but only for me, not for you. For you it doesn’t count.)
So what you’re really saying is that I’ll disagree with people and despite how much they just know that they’re right, if I have the audacity to argue my point and remain unconvinced, obviously I am refusing to admit fault.

How about when you cited "Pyrotechnics, Explosives & Fireworks." as an authoratitive cite for the classification of white phosphorous under the international laws of war? A cite that, in fact, claimed not that WP was still being classified as a weapon but that it used to be? Did you admit your error then?

This never happened, anywhere. And you are arguing in bad faith.
The truth is that I was the first to cite data on the rate of malnutrition.
Yes, you kept claiming that I didn’t know what malnutrition was, but that was obviously false. Should you be Warned for debating in bad faith?
In fact, I pointed out to you that a discussion of the degree of malnutrition and the actual health risks from it would be a perfectly viable tack but that bombastic claims about how “Gaza is starving!” were not. You saw this. I discussed it with you.
and yet, in bad faith, you are repeatedly claiming that I disputed what malnutrition is.

Of course, you also declared that chocolate was an essential food.
As you don’t have a problem with facts, you can certainly cite where you admitted that was true and, in fact, as you’re perfectly willing to admit fault, you didn’t keep trying to rationalize reasons why chocolate was a necessity, including arguing in bad faith that its inclusion in US ration packs meant it was a necessity but cigarettes’ inclusion in US ration packs did not mean that they were a necessity during the time they were included.

Again we see you fundamentally debating in bad faith. Inclusion in ration packs goes to show just how necessary something is, except when you’re not arguing that it’s necessary. Being ignorant of a 2008 verdict means that someone is totally ignorant of all the basic facts… except when you’re ignorant of it and then it isn’t imortant.

This is also in bad faith. You made this same clam and I pointed out the actual facts. The WHO looked at all major diseases in the relevant time period.

How horrible!
You made a claim, and then someone responded by arguing that a different metric was needed… and they didn’t agree with you! Obviously, Something Must Be Done!

Correct.

Indeed. I don’t agree with you and I don’t accept your arguments and have my own, therefore the mods must do something!!! And you don’t like my arguments, therefore they must be made in bad faith! And you’re claiming things now like pointing out that misusing the word “need” to mean “something you can live your entire life without” is “baseless logic”.

Since you’re now using poor logic to sell your point, are you annoyed at your own argument?

Yes, and whose new definition he was then shown to be using in bad faith, selectively, and to bolster his rhetoric. Before going on to repeat the thing he claimed not to have been saying, when he declared that the south had been totally obliterated. Of course he’d probably claim he didn’t really mean that, either. Which brings up the question of why someone would exaggerate quite so often and say quite so many things they didn’t mean, all for rhetorical effect.

Yet again, do you think that Captain would have minded if someone said “Of course Israel defended itself, Hezbollah flattened all of Israel within firing range!” It would have been, after all, using Captain’s own metric. So he would have been fine with it, right? Or if someone had said “Of course Israel went to war, the whole of Lebanon are terrorists!” Captain would have agreed with that, right? After all, some of Lebanon was hit by bombs so he claimed that the whole of it was, and some of Lebanon are terrorists so one could claim that the whole of Lebanon are terrorists.
I mean, right?

Captain was arguing in good faith, wasn’t he?

Yet another example of your bad faith debating.
In point of fact, I criticized the embargo, said it was too draconian and that it was causing undue hardship for Gazans and that it should be loosened.

This, on the other hand, is an actual instance of bad faith debating. I never did any such thing and in fact pointed out that a discussion over the degree of malnutrition and its effects would have been valid. Unable to deal with that fact, you claim that instead I quibbled over the definition of malnutrition.

122

Define “jerk”.
Oh, you just did.
Your definition is not complete.
People who post incomplete definitions are jerks.
You are a jerk.

:smiley:

123

More bad faith argument (like Tagos’ in the original thread where he claimed that he’d been a strong supporter of Israel before he started debating with me… except almost a year before I joined the board he was already calling for the UN to potentially use force against Israel and talking about Israel as a dictatorship.)
Now instead of taking responsibility for the quality of your own thoughts, suddenly it’s my fault that you have an anti-Israel narrative and you will deliberately try to find facts to support it.

“My mind is closed… I blame FinnAgain!!!”

“No, seriously! I just admitted to exactly what FinnAgain said I was doing, but he’s distorting what I’m saying! And it’s not fair because instead of admitting that he controls how my mind works, he’s pointing out that the behavior I just admitted to is the behavior I just admitted to! Something Must Be Done!!!”

Probably because they haven’t bought into your claim that you are powerless, powerless you say, to look at the facts and have an open mind and instead you must, simply must only argue to support your anti-Israel narrative and that all that is my fault.
Just a guess.

Yet again you reveal that your only purpose is to try to rationalize the mods coming down on me while you deliberately ignore other people involved in the same behavior.
Captain brought it up? I’m at fault for responding.
Captain responded to me? I’m at fault.
The “pointless” divergence continued based on Captain’s original comment? I’m at fault.

Since you’re arguing in bad faith, and you’ve already admitted that you yourself don’t care about the truth and you’re only trying to find facts to support your anti-Israel narrative, your flaming me (out of the Pit) for trolling is curious.

More bad faith arguing on your part. Should the mods step in? You made that statement in the context of claiming that the blockade was broken and Israel would not “get a second bite at the apple” and be able to engage in self defense via the interdiction of weapons to Hamas.

This is actually rather obvious. Someone who claims that limited bombing meant that the “whole country was flattened!” and then admits that he was deliberately exaggerating to score rhetoric points has admitted that they are willing to exaggerate facts for rhetorical effect. Just like someone who claimed that “All Palestinians are terrorists!” would, from then out, not be a particularly reliable source for comments about Palestinian society.

I know, because you refuse to take responsibility for your own behavior and your mind must be my fault, and even though it’s 100% accurate it’s “dishonest” because your own admission of your own behavior isn’t flattering. So pointing it out must be dishonest on my part.

Mother of mercy… you’ve claimed that your timeline was support for your argument, and now you’re asking me why it was relevant? Show some good faith, why don’t you?

Yet more of your bad faith arguing? I suppose I’m making you do that, too?
It was relevant because it was his initial formulation. He was the one who brought it up. But he used comments that he admitted dramatically exaggerated the facts to support his rhetorical point about one side, and avoided using the exact same language when dealing with another side. Even if he hadn’t explicitly brought it up first, being willing to wildly exaggerate about one side and only one side in a conflict is indeed relevant to whether or not that party is accurately reporting the actions of that side in the conflict.

124

And by the next page after you made this comment, we wind up seeing exactly what you describe. I guess I have to chime in with "I love you, FinnAgain (in a manly, not-gay sort of way :D)!

FinnAgain’s “shitstorms” do get tedious, but the tediousness is usually the fault of the person he’s “Finning”. [Can we adopt the term “finning” on SDMB, in the same way that “fisking” has become a general internet term for the same sort of thing?]

125

Another word that’s usually distorted beyond recognition. :wink:

Anyway, Damuri Ajashi, we do have an ignore function. Look toward the top left corner of your screen and click on USER CP. On the left hand side of that screen, you’ll see an option that says ‘Edit Ignore List.’ You can then enter names on your ignore list. When they post in a thread you’ll get a message that says there is a post by a user on your ignore list, and you’ll have the option to read it if you choose. Be forewarned that you’re not allowed to disclose who is on your ignore list unless you’re in the Pit, so any ‘nah nah, I can’t see your posts’ nonsense won’t win you any fans on the staff.

126

How about it, Mods? What are the “warn stats” for that thread? How many total warnings, people warned, warnings per person? Skip the names, just give us the stats.

127

My point has been made.

I am not going to substitute a pedantic trail of hijacks in GD for exactly the same debate here.

No doubt FinnAgain will see this as him “winning”. Congratulations.

128

By the way, are we now allowed to call people trolls as well as jerks in ATMB?
Can we get official confirmation on this?

129

‘Now?’

If you’re in an argument with another poster and you call him a jerk or a troll, you’ll get a warning. But this is a forum for discussion about the rules. If users cannot employ the words that we use to describe behavior that breaks the rules, there’s pretty much no way to ask any questions in this forum.

130

Yes. You want your side to be able to use over-the-top anti-Israel hyperbole and obviously loaded words, and don’t want to be called on it.

There’s a huge, HUGE difference between “Israel dropped some bombs on Lebanon” and “Israel completely flattened the entire country!!!11!!”*.

Do you see why objecting to people using propaganda-like loaded terms and over-the-top hyperbole is not a “pointless divergence”?

*Not a direct quote of CRSP of course.

131

So I am free to respond to posters comments, in this thread, by saying “you are a jerk” or “you are trolling”, “you are a troll”, or “at thus and such a time you were trolling”, correct?

132

Wait a sec—I think this contradicts previous rulings–if you care, I can try to find them, but I thought that here you had to use circumlocutions like “Fenris is engaging in troll-like behavior” (maybe ok) or “That post of Fenris’s seems troll-ish” (certainly ok).

I’m pretty sure Dex was giving warnings for direct application of “Troll” on a pretty regular basis.

133

A piece of my last post may not have gone through. I will quote it for emphasis.

If you are describing another poster’s behavior and you want to explain what rule you believe was broken and why, you’re free to say he was being a jerk at such a time or trolling with such and such a post.

I should stress this for for everyone: This is a forum for talking about the rules and how they’re enforced. So we have to allow some comments that wouldn’t be allowed in other forums. But this is not The Pit.

134

The same reason they apparently put up with another poster’s style of debate which boils down to saying “You’re wrong. Case closed” over and over–and I mean literally every second or third post when he gets on a roll. No actual info, just “No it isn’t” or “You’re wrong” type posts repeated as much as 10-12 times in a 30 minute period in a thread. (I’ve reported it to the mods and nothing much has been done, so I assume it’s ok)

Apparently the rule is "Style of debate (used loosely in the above case–reciting “Monty Python’s Department of Arguments” sketch doesn’t strike me as a debate, so much) is user’s prerogative, however annoying people find it. Actual insults are what’s banned.

135

No, it did. Are you saying that the people in this thread who have said I’m trolling are not in an argument with me? Tagos claimed that "FA basically trolls any thread involving Israel. " and you quoted Damuri’s agreement with that.
If I felt like it (I don’t, but I’d like to know where my options lie) can I point out that certain posters’ behavior, especially with this admissions on certain points both in and out of this thread, constitute trolling?

Likewise, some folks have said things like “[Finn] is a jerk.” Am I entitled to do the same thing should I so choose? “You, Poster X, are a jerk because you do thus and such.”

What’s the difference? In the Pit you can say “you are a troll.” In ATMB evidently you can say “you troll any thread on a certain subject.”

136

If you want to make the argument that the posts should be moderated because they’re being jerks or trolling or something else, you can do that.

The difference is that in the Pit, a poster is not going to get warned regardless of how the comment phrase it. In ATMB, posters can ask about the rules and ask if certain actions count as being a jerk or a troll, which they can’t do in any forum except the Pit. But if the posters try to use an ATMB thread to snipe at each other and settle scores from another discussion, warnings will be issued and the thread will get shut down.

137

Okay. Seems to me that posters have been sniping to try to settle scores, but I don’t see much point in arguing about it. Thanks for the clarification.

138

I know very well the definition of an ad hominem attack. I just quoted it for you. Dismissing a claim based on the reputation of the entity that proffers a claim is a logical fallacy. Why is it a fallacy? Because being strictly logical about things, propositions stand and fall on their own merits. This is precisely why formal logic is called formal logic: the truth value of a sentence is defined solely in terms of the structural form of that sentence, and nothing else (cf. Tarski’s semantic notion of truth). Which brings us to the main point: the truthity of that map is completely independent of the reputation of the group that created it, which was the point of the analogy (again, note: analogy is not equivalence) with the tobacco companies and their research.

(Judicious use of italicisation for emphasis of the salient points.)

139

You just made up a word, CRSP. I can’t believe a thing you type anymore!

140

Obviously not. Pointing out that a source doesn’t have verification for its claims is not an ad hominem fallacy. Pointing out that the only substantiation for its claims is its own say-so, and that it’s a blatantly partisan source is not an ad hom fallacy.
If you know that, then why do you keep claiming otherwise? If you don’t know that, then how can you possibly claim you know what an ad hom fallacy is?

More bad faith argument from you. Should you be Warned?
Nobody “dismissed” anything. I pointed out that due to a lack of credibility, and that the facts were uncited and unsourced, the claims should not be taken as proven.
You then claimed that we had to take them on their word, or else it was an ad hominem fallacy. :rolleyes:

You are now arguing, in bad faith, that the premises somehow had to “stand of fall on their own merits”. And yet you refused to do that.
When it was pointed out that the premises had no actual verification behind them, were unicited and unsourced and based on no investigation at all, and were only backed up by someone’s say-so, you tried to handwave that all away.

Instead, you committed the fallacy of shifting the burden of proof and rather than proving that the map’s contents were accurate, you demanded proof that certain coordinates had not been bombed/hit by missiles in a certain date range. As if it was reasonable to find several articles along the lines of “Newsflash: site 75 miles north-northeast of Beiruit not bombed yet during the war.”

And when the only thing that supports that “truthity” is their say so via uncited and unsourced claims that track back to a blog page that, likewise, used uncited and unsourced claims with zero actual investigation done beyond the allegation that certain headlines had appeared in two named and numerous unnamed “news sources”, the truth value of the map remains indetermine because the claims have not been proven.

When faced with this fact, you instead claimed that it was an ad hominem fallacy. :rolleyes:

Just admit you were wrong on move on. “Okay, that map didn’t have any support or independent verification. It was not a solid cite. Pointing out that it was unverified and refusing to rely on the mere say-so of a group shown to be glaringly partisan is not, in fact, fallacious.”
It’s not hard.