Qin Shi Huangdi - please, stop demonstrating your woeful ignorance about the real world

The BBQ Pit
1

Qin - once, just once, why don’t you actually have a clue about the ridiculous things you come out with? I know it would risk you not winning the annual Doper “Blindest morality-to-post ratio” award but I think it’d be better for everyone, in the long run.

You quite happily claim to be a conservative and religious, and by god do we know it from your posts, but some of the crap you post is beyond belief. I’m still recovering from what has got to be your biggest 'tard-bomb to date. I seriously wish I was quoting you out of context, but you quite happily plopped that down into the thread with a completely straight face. I don’t even know where to start with pointing out what a completely asinine opinion that is to hold, not to mention how WRONG a conclusion you draw from it.

Next, we have this little gem - out of the mouths of babes and future GOP presidential candidates. Sure, don’t engage with a massive problem in your society, just deny it exists. This chart shows the level of income inequality in the US verses other countries, you don’t compare well, being in the top quartile of having a high inequality rate using each of the multiple indices/data sets. I’d also invite you to read this page and consider some of the factors it describes, not least food security where it points out that food insecurity in the US is going up and affects over 10% of the population, something you specifically state is a problem that doesn’t exist. For something a little more scholarly than Wiki I’d point you in the direction of this book which contains a huge amount of data and a very comprehensive set of statistical
conclusions about the negative impacts on high levels of the wealth inequality that you seem so keen to deny or exist or, even better, believe is actually a good thing.

I’ll finish with something that I think demonstrates just how impervious to self reflection you really are - you think atheists have it easy in the US. For the record, atheist I may be, I don’t live in the US, so therefore don’t really have much of a dog in that particular fight. Still, such a statement displays vast ignorance, as well as a desire to make definitive statements based on your own world-view without any real consideration of your ignorance. How many politicians are there in the US that happily admit they’re atheist? Or better yet, how many atheist presidents have there been? But then I guess it doesn’t really matter, because they’re all swearing on the same bible when they take the office, despite the constitutionally enshrined separation of church and state, so they’re upholding religion whether they want to or not. For crying out loud, you’re living in a country that nearly voted a [piece of legislation](Morning Briefings | KFF Health News Hill Watch-0) that would allow employers to not pay for healthcare for anything they found religiously objectionable - you seriously think that’s not a difficult place for someone of no faith to live? The power of faith over politics is, in fact, so strong that it makes politicians change their positions to ensure that they can get into power.

Thing is Qin, overall you’re clearly an intelligent and knowledgeable person - to call you ignorant in the round is quite simply wrong, as you’re not. But where it comes to your own sense of morality and politics you seem to be utterly blinkered, and I can’t help but wonder if you engage in some kind of selective education where you refuse to expose yourself to anything that might make you think differently. I hear all the time about how you’re just a teenager, but I don’t really care, you’ve got a brain so why the fuck don’t you start pointing it at something that will help you understand what the real world is like? And I can assure you the real world is not simply the one that accords with MY personal politics, which are all driven entirely by pragmatism. We actually overlap on some things, from what I can see in your posting history, but when you’re able to seriously suggest the biggest communist government in the world would be best brought down by Christianity, and that that would make it better (despite all the evidence to the contrary that YOU YOURSELF ARE SURROUNDED BY) then it makes me wonder if there’s any hope for you.

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I don’t think you’re being entirely fair to him. I mean, the kid’s a conservative evangelical Christian. Of course he thinks the world would be better if more people were Christian and an atheistic communist society were replaced with a capitalistic Christian one. That’s not a matter of ignorance about the real world. That’s just a case of the two of you having different beliefs about “better”.

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I support this pitting 100%, though I think I understand it. Moral certainty is something most people grow out of, and Qin hasn’t had the time to do that yet.

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I often wonder why anyone, other than maybe a school teacher with delusions of educating the “young, enquiring minds” would ever engage with this poster. Seems like an endless exercise in semantics.

He poses hypothetical questions, perhaps to help with his homework, folks get all up in arms with reasoned answers - then he disappears and we are left in a quagmire of back and forth nonsensical arguments.

I think he fishes here to stir the bottom sediment.

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He’s shown some growth. He certainly appears to be more malleable than other posters.

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I’d say Qin has a reasonable point in two of the cites the OP linked to.

(On why creative professions seem to have a higher than average percentage of homosexuals) “I’d imagine its because homosexuals who are in a position of fame can “come out” and be more accepted than if they were say random office drudges.”

I’d say that’s a reasonable point. Some professions have a higher stigma against and higher consequences over being homosexual. People in those professions would be more likely to conceal their homosexuality.

(In a thread about the Soviet Union) “Very few people in the US are actually starving or dying the poor have welfare programs and food stamps and so on and most of them are well enough to own a car and a TV and most homeless people in the sense of hoboes, beggars, and the like have intentionally chosen that lifestyle. Millions of Soviets starved to death in the Holodomor and similar famines caused intentionally or by Soviet stupidity.”

Qin may be too knee-jerkingly anti-communist in general but the argument he made here is backed up by historical fact. There was widespread famines in the Soviet Union. And there has not been that level of famine in the United States.

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It seems to me that he falls back on standard Republican talking points more often than he used to, and I find that discouraging. I think he’s capable of doing better than that and I’d like to see it.

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So you’re saying that actors are more willing to come out than coal miners? I would like to subscribe to your newsletter…

I feel he has improved since he started, and has at least expressed some opinions which don’t put him at all in a social conservative camp. It does seem like he is changing over time. Interesting, idiosyncratic views on many things political and non-political.

So, umm… are we still saying he is 14 or so? Because things I’ve seen seem to support and conflict.

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Why not? I would imagine they’d get less flak from their fellow actors than a gay coal miner would get from his fellow coal miners.

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Look Sir Humphrey/OP. He ia a kid. Stop expecting him not to act as one.

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Most people don’t grow out of moral certainty, in my experience.

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He’s still a teenager. He’s not old enough yet not to know everything.

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Yes, that’s probably an example of what I’m saying. I don’t know for certain because I don’t hang out with coal miners much. Maybe they’re a lot more open-minded than I realize.

Here’s another example. There are 1696 players in the NFL. The number of openly gay players in the NFL is zero. So what’s your conclusion from these facts?

  1. Gay men can’t play football.
  2. Gay men who play football choose to conceal their sexual orientation.

I’m saying it’s answer #2.

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Qin seems like he leads a very sheltered life. But he is trying to inform himself and that is good.

Some of his responses and attitudes remind me of home schooled students that later enter a general curriculum with a broad range of other students from different back grounds. I work in a training program and see this often. Poor social skills, a tendency to be more comfortable being around and talking to adults rather that their own age group. Lack of exposure to diverse opinions.

He is certainly getting exposed to diverse viewpoints here, and hopefully he is learning things that will help him as he matures. He is smart and really does seem to be trying to understand things better.

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His join date is July '09. Since he had to be a minimum of 13 (right?) I would figure he is more likely 16ish at this point.

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I agree with this point. While he’s still ignorant and dogmatic, he’s much better than he used to be, and he takes fewer ridiculous positions and defends better the positions he does take.

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I was tempted to point out to him in the Mainstream Xians and Jews: What do you really think of Mormons thread that by his response

That he actually considers them heathens, not heretics if he doesn’t believe them to be Christian, but what would be the point. I’m still not entirely convinced the poster formerly known as Curtis LeMay isn’t just a troll, not a teenager.

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Qin has posted that he interacts, if poorly, with schoolmates. Was he home-schooled earlier?

Qin’s posts sometimes irritate me, but his positions seem almost reasonable in the first 3 posts linked by OP.

One point in Qin’s defense: He’s admitted to being wrong once or twice that I’ve seen. This is one or two more admissions than are ever made by the adult right-wing idiots on this board. I may be wrong, but I think he’s even changed his position on the 2002 Iraq Adventure, now calling it a mistake, at least in hindsight.

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I’m pretty sure he’s admitted he joined when he was under age.

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I wish that the SDMB would simply adopt a policy of not allowing posters under the age of 18. In the whole history of the SDMB, I can think of exactly ONE underage poster who was an asset to the message board, and this includes the AOL days. ONE. The others that I knew about were either blithering idiots or downright pains in the ass.

Every time I bring this up in the mod discussions, though, I get overruled.