Uh, Nimoy’s dead. Call Zac Quinto, instead.
Dammit. I said quick.:mad:
But they pronounce it as “shEp-tik”, as in “Did you put the shEp-tik on the shEd-ule before or after Boxing Day?” Oh, you wacky, iconoclastic British, what with your royals and your colonizing and your opium wars.
As for skeptics, it can be really difficult to take someone seriously when they are referencing heavily edited and repeatedly translated fables as evidence for their belief in an invisible but omnicient deity, or someone who earnestly believes in the existance of the Sasquatch despite a complete lack of any definitive evidence and only blurry, distant videos when we’ve had a decade of people carrying high resolution video cameras with them everywhere and routinely videoing common activities.
Stranger
I thought that line was pretty funny.
Plus, you know who else sometimes throws a little snark into their skepticism?
People who write things like this are trying to be informative and entertaining, presumably in the hopes that that’ll reach more people than being informative and dry-as-dust. Or they, personally, just find it more fun that way.
I’m not saying that you don’t have a legitimate complaint. The snark can go too far or be too mean-spirited sometimes. But I don’t that was a good example.
It is a fact that whenever I post online as part of an argument* it’s largely a form of performance art, and if I can amuse myself and others that’s really the most important thing.
I mean, it ain’t like I’m going to convince anybody of anything, after all.
*or not as part of an argument
Do we? I am sceptical.
I can add some snark if you’d like? In the spirit of the thread, of course.
Sorry, but if you (The royal you, of course, not anyone in particular.) are going on about ear candling or detoxifying shoe inserts the disdain is real. It comes from having to listen, again, to someone espouse that this time THIS TIME, it really works.
It has become increasingly clear to me that the people who offer up these theories are not interested in debate. They are interested in validation and indulging their narcissism. The most effective weapon against these kinds of people is to point out their stupidity. It may not change their mind, but it lets them know I won’t give them the validation they want.
Over time I have essentially given up hope that these people are actually reasoning or interested in good faith discussion. It has become my default to simply assume they are narcissists, trolls, or morons, and treat them accordingly. Especially so when I see the same claim made repeatedly. This is a large part of why I gave up on sites like Quora.
Lastly, I have to ask, what tools should we be using? They don’t acknowledge fact, and they don’t acknowledge reason. What does that leave us with?
Fire?
An encylopedic entry is, however, generally not expected to be written as though you’re talking to the reader like you were pals, drinking a beer together.
Not really, but you did apparently steal a bunch of vowels from the Czechs and insert them quasi-randomly into your own words, leaving the poor Czechs to strč prst skrz krk. It’s just one of many cultural attrocities committed by the British Empire upon civilization, starting with steamrollering over the Subcontinent and continuing today in your queen’s obsession with ugly hats. You did give the world P.G. Wodehouse, Douglas Adams, John Oliver, and Monty Python, or course, but given that those are all dedicated to satarizing essential Britishness, I’m not sure that is much of a complement.
Stranger
Sure, but RationalWiki is not an encyclopedia. Their front page states their purpose quite clearly:
Also see: What is a RationalWiki article?
OP: You have shown by starting this thread that the ridicule and disdain are having a useful effect - namely, getting you to notice that no, the ideas you’re talking about don’t deserve an exception either - that they are exactly as true and exactly as valid as the tooth fairy.
You might want to check out the Debunking Handbook coauthored by a climate scientist and a cognitive scientist. It’s only a couple pages. The Worldview Backfire Effect section is probably most relevant to this thread. It’s one of the ways that we can actually strengthen the mistaken beliefs that we think we are arguing against.
The same applies for an analytical text.
Obviously, the managers are accepting of the format that they’ve ended up with, but that doesn’t mean that the site has value or should be that way.
It may serve sufficiently as a place for skeptics to blow off steam, but that’s not terribly useful as a source of general information and background on the topics at hand.
And the instruction on how to deal with the Worldview Backfire Effect is “forget the believers; play to the undecideds.” (Along with a note about avoiding trigger words and making them happy about other things to catch them in a good mood, if you have *no choice *but to try to convince the fools.)
And thus, snark! It’s comedy, baby! Though if one is really intending to snare the lurkers one should be wary of sounding too malicious. I’m not sure that’s an issue for Rational Wiki, though - people don’t go there if they’re not already at least somewhat skeptical.
That’s an interesting statistic, which, if still true, perhaps indicates the amount of time different groups spend on the internet. ‘Poison Pen Letters’ were a traditional female crime even when the anonymous author described themselves as male. (In much the same way that hitting people is a traditional male crime)
We’ll send out a search party…
It should be noted that people who are credulous about ghosts, the Lost Kingdom of Atlantis or the diseappearance of the Mary Celeste are relatively harmless, and I’m not eager to piss on their parade.
It’s a different story for those who promote false cancer cures, supplements/diets that address the mythical Root Cause of All Disease or antivaccination idiocy. Such delusions deserve a) factual debunking, which if repeatedly ignored (or answered by charges that the debunker is a Pharma Shill or a part of the Bill Gates Depopulation Conspiracy) are highly deserving of a heaping helping of derision.
As for RationalWiki, while it certainly takes on snarky tones, its articles in my experience carry a high degree of accuracy. Wooists don’t like the implication that they’re irrational and try to pooh-pooh the source, but what they’re consistently unable to do is challenge the evidence therein*.
*I’ve seen the same sort of sneers directed at Wikipedia. It doesn’t matter that the Wikipedia article may be excellent and contain links to solid published research, it’s seemingly enough for these folk to say “Ha, Wikipedia? LOLOLOL”.
Credulity is not a virtue.
As an aside, “Gloryhole, motherfucker” as a shout-out to any fans of Tom&Cecil.