That’s not my face, that’s my double entendre.
Boom Boom!
I tend to compare the Pit to GD as the baby pool versus the Great Ocean. We need something to keep the wusses occupied.
GD is what it is all about, baby. It’s what separates the men from the boys, the women from the girls. It’s where the adults duke it out for real.
What, we lack passion? What else but passion would drive grown men to spend their all too scarce spare time, hunched over a keyboard in the dark of the night, staring with bespectacled eyes at a flickering screen, muttering under their breath and shouting feeble cries of joy when they have googled another cite with which to crush their opponent? (Uuuuh, do not forget to delete this after preview)
By all means keep yourself busy with your measly gripes and grunts, your pathetic expressions of frustration at the guy who didn’t greet you at the coffee machine, the papercut you received from your paltry payslip, the extra step you had to walk from the curb to your SUV. Shake your tiny fists at the slings and arrows that outrageous fortune seems to send your way. I will not stoop to pity you, who cannot help yourself. For it is not given to everyone to see the larger issues, to lift your gaze from the spectacles in the fire and leave the Platonic cave, out to the real world.
I’d let you watch, I would invite you, but the cites we use would not excite you.
So you better go back to your bars, your temples, your massage parlors…
: blinks :
The only place I’ve ever been offered cocaine was while walking down the street one afternoon in Amsterdam.
This kind of post seems to pop up every few months. A lot of the replies are dismissive, usually with edged with humor but sadly sometimes not.
For me, Great Debates is the message board. Why else would we have the quantity or quality of members if not for this noble heart?
If you want to discuss the arts, pointless stories, ask questions you kick yourself for not knowing, or just to vent at an anounomus audience, there are plenty of boards around. Great Debates is the meat, anything else that goes on around here is just gravy. Just because you don’t want to post doesn’t mean there is not much to learn with some patience.
I usually swing by the Pit first for a laugh or a tear, but I never miss GD.
You could say GD embiggins the smallest man.
Fessie wrote:
The irony, of course, is that your opponents’ view itself cannot be proved empirically. It is merely one of the delightful mysteries of materialism. (Incidentally, my wife, Edlyn, has told me about your postings in the soul thread. She admires you. Welcome to Straight Dope.)
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GD and the Pit are fun, but the purpose of this board is to fight ignorance. Ordering all students, all teachers, all management, all parents, all non-parents, or the entire mercantile class to perform auto- and caprine felching or spending hundreds of thousands of bytes disputing the reality of the IPU can be amusing, but such are not serious efforts to fight ignorance.
I happen to think that plenty of ignorance is fought in the debate threads. I wouldn’t dismiss the rest of the fora in terms of ignorance fighting, but I think it’s a bit overreaching to imply that GD doesn’t attract and hold a goodly number of ignorance fighters, or that the posts there don’t help illuminate anyone.
But Gaudere, don’t you think that too often people post in there not to convince others of their position and widen their own horizons but simply to beat their own chests and pound their own position into the ground through repetition?
Tusculan, that’s twice this week you’ve made me smile. In fact today you made me laugh out loud. Thank you.
Tomndebb, I have to disagree with you. I’ve lost some of my own ignorance in GD, and I don’t miss it a bit. You were one of the people who took it off me when I was a poor, innocent newbie wandering into GD. No, I don’t want it back! 
There are people in GD who are firmly and deeply invested in their positions with both mind and heart. On some issues, I’m one of them. That doesn’t stop me from learning from and even appreciate the positions of those who disagree with me. Of course sometimes after craning my head around to see where someone’s coming from, I still wind up concluding they have their heads up their asses, but it’s an imperfect world. The people I respect most on this board I respect because of what I’ve seen of them in GD.
Oh, and in response to Dantheman’s
What makes you think some of us haven’t?
CJ
(You’d better believe I’m previewing this puppy!)
You say that as if it’s a bad thing, dantheman.
I slightly disagree, at least I disgree that no ignorance is fought in GD. I know that I’ve learned things in GD. I’ve even been proven wrong a time or two (rare but it’s happened ;))
Sometimes following or participating in a debate is a very good way to learn about an issue. Sometimes ignorance can be exposed and eliminated through weight of evidence. I’ve seen posters wade into evolution threads full of confidence in YEC or ID and come out, if not enlightened, at least dazed and thoughtful.
I’ve found that the cite intensive political battles in GD have done far more to delineate and elucidate certain issues than anything on Fox News or CNN.
I know that GD is a great forum in which to be exposed to a wide range of religious and philosophical views and I think that a lot of people’s ignorance, prejudices and misconceptions have been moderated from participating in those threads
There is much to be said also for the peripheral information one can pick up in those threads. Many is the time I’ve clicked a posted link looking for a cited point, only to become absorbed inhe linked site once I did so.
Most importantly, GD teaches you how to think, how to argue, how to spot logical fallacies and how to avoid making them. How many people (including me) got their asses handed to them as newbies because they thought they could just spout off, unchallenged, like on any other message board?
To me GD is the soul of this board. That’s where I go for some hot, sweaty, brain-on-brain action. I know if no other internet forum quite like it for its level of intellect, diversity of viewpoints, reliability in terms of fact based argument and, quite often, its general level of wit (The IPU is a great rhetorical device). GD is what sucked me into this place and it’s what keeps me here.
grunt Me know answer to all life’s problems. Here is long, enumerated list that will explain it all to you simple fools. You fools! I said I KNOW ANSWER! Do not doubt me; your arguments are weak and your coding is puny. Or is it your arguments are puny and your coding is weak. I have cites, and my cites can beat up your cites. Your cites can’t wash my cites’ bum. No, you suck. No, you. No, you!. Neener, neener, neener! grunt
At no point have I suggested that ignorance is not fought in GD. I would even say that ignorance is fought in the Pit. (I would not tend to post in either, otherwise.) I just reacted to the notion that “For me, Great Debates is the message board.”
(I also suspect that there is a lot more ignorance being propagated in GD and the Pit, so we need to struggle harder in those Fora.)
Nothing to add.
Just wanted Tusculan to know the geeky Murray Head/Chess reference did not go unappreciated.