I don’t think you are harshing out on me and in fact I think you are tending to agree with me in general. Please note that last night I did modify one claim to “Gay activists have made a call for gay parents to participate in studies.” (which no-one ever acknowledged in favor of continual demands for proof of the motivation) and in any case I apologized and confessed that in my own opinion I was abusing the doctrine on that question
I maintain I should not have to cite rising divorce trends in the seventies or that the bible is a historical document. No one questioned these. But I had a hard time keeping up with the thread, so I should presume others may have too, so I’m not holding anyone to blame for something being missed.
I just hate to see this kind of stuff going on:
“In 1978, after Jimmy Carter was in office for…”
“Prove Jimmy Carter was in office.”
It is simple to provide the link, but it does nothing to discourage the obstructionist. Making the obstructionist go get his own general eduication discourages him from making ridiculous demands, even if the original claimant could also easily come up with the citation.
That’s the point I am getting at.
And if there are any hard feelings between you and I I’d apologize and hope to move on in a spirit of respecting the other’s right to speak even if we disagree.
Fetching the cite for the obstructionist does nothing to discourage the obstructionist. When you have fetched proof that Jimmy Carter was president in 1978 he wants you to define “office” and then when you fetch that back and find you need to deconstruct a strawman and then he wants a cite that divorce rose while carter was in office and then when you get back he wants you to get him this or that…
Let him go obtain his own general education.
But if it is ok to make someone fetch this and that fetch me a Mocha while you’re at it
May I also suggest that when you cite something with a link, you quote the relevant text from that text so that the reader will not be left searching for your supportive data. That also muddies your argument.
May I also suggest that you will be happier with your posts when you have satisfied yourself that you have presented a sound argument and not when you have secured the praise and goodwill of other posters here. That is especially in short supply when we are debating. It is the nature of the beast.
I wish you well and I hope that you continue to sharpen your skills.
Yeah, well… those are the people who took Freshman Debate in high school and who only ever learned that if they challenge everything, all the time, they’ll “win”.
I generally just humor them with a quick link sans commentary, then brush them off to talk to people who are actually interested in having a discussion.
Perhaps as some may get to know me well enough they will know that I may do a bit of devil’s advocate, and for the sake of a spirited debate, choose the unpopular side simply because hardly anyone else is. I’m not trolling or doing it to be rude, but so the other viewpoint is represented, especially if I am partly swayed by both sides arguments and kind of sit on the fence on an issue like gay marriage. Doing that willingly, I know praise isn’t exactly the likely response as an underdog in an emotionally charged issue.
I was asked to prove the bible is a historical document and that divorce rose in the seventies. We all know these things.
I really really want to avoid a rehash of last night which I have apologized for, and would prefer the hypotheticals, myself. They are sufficient for a discussion as to whether the type of behavior is acceptable or not, not the merit of the content.
In the spirit of solving my own problem I could simply ignore the people I think obstruct unfairly, and find a half dozen or so people who can take either side of a debate and impassionately argue pro and con, and just talk to them while ignoring the likes of der trihs.
I did not mean to exagerate, but dumbed it down to a point nearly all must agree.
No, we don’t. I have no inkling about what happened to the divorce rates in the 70s. I suspect that most people don’t.
Normally, if you had sprung such information on me as key evidence in whatever debate we were engaged in, I’d just look it up myself… I mean, how else would I have any chance to refute it? But if someone asks for a cite, you really should give one.
I suspect that “historical document” may have meant something different to you than it did to whomever asked you for a cite. The phrase could easily be interpreted as “historically accurate document” or even “unaltered historical document”, both of which leave plenty of room for debate.
If that was the case, then a definition of the term is probably what was sought.
There’s a special pleading if you happen to be too young to remember the seventies, but even so, appropriate classes in high school should give brief outlines at the least of our nation’s social history. But maybe not, lots of different education standards out there. Tell me so and I will be glad to get you a cite. And for sure I am more likely to do whatever you suggest when I don’t think you’re just obstructing.
If I say “historical document” others should not read into it anything about accuracy or definitive on supernatural claims and God forbid anyone argue it is science…no, my claim involved whether a concept was known to man in ancient times. I cited the verse and that is sufficient proof that the words are written.
I was born in 67, so I kinda remember some of the 70s. And high school was a little while ago. I’ve just never much cared about the divorce rate in any given decade, mostly because I’ve had no reason to care. If I ever learned that fact, I promptly forgot it as I had no use for it. I imagine that most people don’t know just off the tops of their heads, and those who do probably don’t know exactly how the rate compared to other decades.
Besides… don’t they say “if you remember the 70s, you weren’t there”?
“Light radiating between 440 and 490 nanometers, at a frequency of 610 to 680 terahertz, or anything that generally radiates light mostly in that range. Also, web color #0000FF, or RGB 0,0,255, or colors visually close to that specific color.”
It’s not hard to define blue. Words do have meaning. Here, try this one. “The condition in which someone else’s happiness comes before your own.”
I didn’t say common knowledge is not legitimate. This is getting tiresome. You are not going to learn anything if you continue to misread posts and misjudge people’s motives. I said that if someone asks you to provide a citation, responding “it’s common knowledge” is not adequate. “It’s common knowledge” might be an acceptable response if someone asks you to cite a particular fact - although even then you may as well just cite it - but it doesn’t work for an entire argument, like some of your claims about gays and about major social trends. In those cases you’re just asking people to assume the conclusion rather than making your point. That’s the problem.
I have to stress here, and I hope this is for the absolute last time, that nobody asked you to prove that your statements were common knowledge. They asked you to prove that the statements were true. No one else gave a damn about the standards for proving something is common knowledge. So eventually it looked like you were arguing about common knowledge because you couldn’t prove your argument and needed an excuse for your inability to prove it. People were not “obstructing” you and they were not trolling you. They asked you to prove your statements were correct, and you did not. In fact, you were trying to argue you didn’t have to prove they were correct. That strategy is not going to work here. So no more nonsense about common knowledge, OK? You are the first person to suggest we have a policy about it (we don’t) and the first person to ask us to make a rule about it (which is not going to happen).
Sometimes it is. Specifically, if other posters are making demands for cites as a method of disrupting debate, that response is not only adequate, it is often more than is needed. And that kind of repeated "Cite! Cite? Cite?’ is pretty common.
And providing a cite is basically feeding the troll.
I haven’t read the thread in question. But I suspect you and I are both fully aware that this kind of thing happens.
David42, what I would recommend is to learn to recognize what kinds of things will trigger this kind of behavior, make sure you are correct, and then ignore it. There is good debate to be had here, but there is some noise to be ignored. Once they figure out you can’t be baited, the attempts will become less frequent (although not disappear).
Yes, that does happen. Some people get argumentative and demand cites for obvious things, or for things that clearly cannot be cited - once in a while you’ll see someone demand a cite for the entire debate topic. But as you may be able to see from the next couple of sentences in my post, that’s not what happened in that thread. The problem was that David42 was asked to support some assertions of fact and he treated almost every single request for a cite as if it were a frivolous waste of his time. His starting point of view, from what I could tell, was that everybody knew he was right and wouldn’t own up to it. That obviously left him frustrated and did not help the discussion. In point of fact, David42 was asked to substantiate assertions like this one:
That one was pretty central to his argument in the thread. When asked for a cite, he said he didn’t have to because it was common knowledge. At least twice, he told posters to just ask three people for their opinions IRL instead of posting a cite. He said elsewhere that divorce rates increased after the introduction of no-fault divorces, and I can believe that. But “every time we change marriage a little bit divorce rates go up” is a broader and more specific claim that demands a cite, and he specifically asserted that lots of studies supported his opinion. But instead of posting links to the studies, he told people to ask their friends if it was true.
I believe I adequately stated an admission that I crossed the line into abuse of the doctrine. I believe I also politely asked to refrain from cherry picking the thread in order to prove I was abusive. And to refrain from judging a question of rule changes based on that particular incident.
It seems there is some support of the idea, and rather than protest an abusive thread by refusing to cite, I am adopting the view that I should only debate with people who are not known for debating unfairly.
But thanks for ignoring my admission and confession.
You are still trying to win the debate itself in which some problems arose, it looks like to me.
