I was warned to lay off in this thread, due to ridiculing my opponent.
Of course I am obliged to go along with the warning, but I would submit that in this particular case there is no better debate tactic. I’m not belittling him for holding to his side, I’m belittling him for an honest and citable lack of knowledge on the scientific method, the development and employment of simulators, noisy data, etc. There are any number of arguments to be made against AGW including political leanings and meddling, financial incentives, unbelievable assumptions made in models, etc. but brazil84 doesn’t have the basic understanding to even grasp–let alone employ–these arguments. And like I said in the thread, if you’re forced to argue algebra with a person who can’t count past 2, there really is nothing to be done but do your best to convince them of their dire need to go and learn those fundamentals.
Ideally there would be a way to not be forced into having such debates, but there aren’t “peer reviewed” debate threads. It’s silly to have AGW, JREF, or any other topic eternally lost to reasoned debate because people with inflated egos aren’t attackable and won’t do anything to get themselves banned. And it’s equally if not greater bullying to go into every thread on a certain topic to derail it–regardless of whether you had any conscious intent of doing so–than to try and get someone to go to GQ and ask questions about his concerns.
I hear you. I’m especially ticked that tom acknowledged in his warning to you that brazil84 wasn’t debating in good faith, but does bugger-all about it.
Well, it wasn’t an official warning right? Still seemed unfair though. Why should brazil84 be allowed to goad people like that? Socratic method my ass.
Jeez, last thing I need is to get in the middle of a fight with a mod, but I have to wonder why, if what you said was so bad (assuming and stating what another person knows), why did this post and this post slip by without a warning? Not to mention in his warning to you, tom actually went out of his way to insult brazil84.
Normally I’m an even bigger stickler for civility than the mods, but if the the guy doesn’t understand the math, you’ve got to be able to say that he doesn’t understand the math.
And note that I’m not defending my behavior, certainly I did go over the line to an extent. But I honestly can’t think of any decent way of dealing with the underlying issue than having a moratorium on particular topics of debate–which is silly and counterproductive.
No, it was long ago decided that we needed to be very clear whenever we were making any sort of request in an official capacity. So we don the mod hat, or title our post “Mod note” or whatever to make posts like tom’s, where no one has done anything worthy of a warning, but where we can see the poster/thread potentially heading down a bad road and we want to nip it in the bud.
When we warn someone, we’re supposed to make it very clear, either with a post title of “Mod warning”, the word warning in the post, or both.
Then every AGW thread is going to end up here, in a pitting of brazil84, and that’ll get old very quickly. I’ve been avoiding pitting him (even though his initial “Lol” schtick was really starting to grate - It’s “LOL”, you wanker) because I don’t think that’s productive - at least in GD, there’s the chance some lurker might get a little more informed.
Thanks for the clarification - I didn’t know that.
Here’s the post in question -
I’m sure you would agree that telling another poster “your standard MO is to post a pretend dialog to wear people down. You are playing games, and don’t present any points to debate” is likely to cause him to respond in kind.
Isn’t doing so under the guise of moderation a cheap shot? Because if he does respond in kind, he’ll get warned.
No – it’s fine to respond to a comment like that here, in the BBQ Pit. You can flame the mods here, and not get any warnings – though you will get strongly worded responses!
tom can correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that critical comments about other posters’ debate styles happen all the time in GD without warning. It’s not at the same level as a personal insult, which seemed to me what tom was trying to avoid.
As for how dispassionately impartial moderators should be when making mod notes, I’m probably not the right person to ask. As long as I’ve been here, I’ve liked the fact that mods sometimes felt free to throw little jabs in their moderation when appropriate. And now I’m a Pit mod, so…you know. Kind of mean.
I do recognize that others may feel differently, and I work to adhere to the standards that have been decided upon, but I’m not going to get up in arms about a retard like brazil84 being told his debate style is “pretend Socratic”.
Well, if the distinction is between “you don’t know anything” and “You’re only pretending to debate, and you do this all the time”, that seems rather a fine one.
Agreed, but that’s why I’m not a GD mod. (And wouldn’t be one unless you put a gun to my head, but even then I’d quit again as soon as you left so you’d have to stand there the whole time.)
