I did do it on purpose. I expect many English speakers know at least some sense of the word “jargon”; but what came to my mind was “jargon and cant” and I also suspect that a lot of people don’t know that particular sense of the word “cant”. At which point I also realized that I had an example.
You do realize that this is a message board, right? The users here are not experts for hire, creating posts based on their technical expertise. People post what they know, ask questions, and have discussions, often resulting in further information being posted. That’s kinda the point of a message board.
Our users create posts, not peer-reviewed expert-level articles for publication.
I suspect a substantial portion of Dopers have played or read old school Dungeons & Dragons. “Thieves Cant” is a language taught by guilds and was a real thing.
Also, I agree with Joey P. OTTOMH, if I ask a question about physics that shows I know nothing then Stranger On A Train and a bunch of others will use the opportunity to politely, kindly and thoroughly educate me. They would never read the post, dismiss me and keep scrolling.
Yes, but the opposite is true. If you attack the cite, then you should come up with a better cite. Saying “The NYT/WSJ/etc is biased” or “wikipedia?” may or may not be true, but show something better.
The idea that encyclopedias and even Wiki are bad cites is false, but your teachers were right. The idea of you writing a paper was not the paper itself, but teaching you how to write a paper and how to do research, So, relying on easy cites didn’t teach you anything.
And certainly in depth research generally trumps shallow research.
There’s some tension here, and the clearest reading is that you think “the majority of this messageboard’s users” aren’t “familiar enough” with this “general interest topic” to “justify their participation” in a thread on that topic. Am I synthesizing these comments correctly?
My view: I read WaPo daily and listen to NPR almost every day and am deeply engaged with labor issues and have been since taking courses on labor history in college back in the nineties, up through my current position as a union local president who is receiving national attention (in my specific field) for our local’s organizing efforts. And I had to look up the U-6 Unemployment rate, because I don’t know that code, even though I have some passing familiarity with the debate around how best to track unemployment rates and how different measures serve different political interests.
If I want to talk about things specific to my field–such as local supplemental property tax rates to fund NC districts, or the differences between IEPs and IDEPs and the racial equity implications of demographic imbalances in cohorts with these plans, or whether the NNAT3 or the CogAT nonverbal is the better identification instrument for highly gifted students–I’d open the conversation in a different arena. If I want to talk about national education policy here, I’m happy to do so, but you better believe I’ll define the terms that I think folks might not be familiar with.
I’m not at all convinced your “move along” advice is either wise or effective.
I’m not sure that that represents the opposite, but I agree.
It is perfectly reasonable to argue that a cite is lacking but then it falls to you to be the one to show why and, yes, back up your claim with relevant cites.
The challenge for any argument should be “can you back up what you claim to be true?”. I’m never impressed by bald assertions. I was the annoying little shit at the back of the class forever asking “how we know that?” My R.E. teacher in particular dispaired, My maths teacher loved it.
Good point.
I don’t think you necessarily have to come up with a batch of cites showing the opposite proposition, though. You could instead provide a cite or a decent explanation for why you think the source given is not a good source at all, or not a good source for the particular info. If you provide only the information, others could reasonably ask for a cite if they think your explanation’s wrong or lacking.
A Wikipedia reference is fine for some types of info (for instance, explaining which meaning of the word “cant” I had in mind); insufficient for others.
If the thief can’t cant, can they still be a thief?
They cannot, and must change their class to woodchuck.
At least they have an incredibly comprehensive guidebook.
That is very true and It is such a common mistake that people make and it often goes over people’s heads.
You can legitimately leave it at “I don’t accept your claim as true” and it doesn’t mean that you are now automatically arguing the opposite with an associated burden to back it up.
Disputing that “A” has been proved is not the equivalent of arguing that “B” is true.
True.
However, if you’re refusing to accept, say, four different peer-reviewed articles from reputable medical journals, all of them agreeing with the specific claim being made, I think your objection is going to look a whole lot better if you can show a decent reason why.
I guess then I’m probably not the only person who thinks of that first when seeing the word “cant”.
That is a reasonable expectation but of course the devil is in the detail and just the sheer number of supporting voices is not always an indication that the underlying claim has merit.
For sciences where experimental, empirical evidence is king and conclusions can be stated with certainty and are subject to repetition and backed up by solid peer-review by a body with a reputation for impartiality…then yes, your point above holds.
The greater the number of independent points of confirmation, the more solid the claim and a continued refusal to accept it becomes less and less reasonable.
However, I’d argue that many of the disagreements we see on this board and in the wider media generally don’t approach that level of scientific rigour and they do not have a solid evidential base.
This is especially true of many claims made within the social sciences and associated cultural issues. There just isn’t a solid basis for the claims, and nothing that rises to the level of a “theory” at all and so in those cases you can justifiably say that it hasn’t met its burden of proof and leave it at that.
There is repetition of a idea or a claim certainly, it gets recycled through media and academia and general usage and gets a varnish of respectability to the point where people forget to question the foundation on which it is built and treat the claim as axiomatic in the same way as we would gravity or quantum mechanics.
I personally find it fascinating to dig into such things and question them.
Not a hypothetical example; the longest thread I ever initiated on this board began when I asked a question about the physics of downhill skiing, during the 2010 Winter Olympics. A host of posters chimed in to do exactly that; one, @Chessic_Sense, even PMed me to explain, when he or she saw that I wasn’t getting it.
Cites are always best because they add substance to “opinions” or “feelings”, but they are absolutely necessary when you are stating something is a “fact”. Cites are also good for the OPs themselves. Sometimes, we’re absolutely certain that something is true but, when we properly research it, we realize we were laboring under an erroneous belief all along.
This is absolutely true! This happened to me when I was going to respond to a post of yours in the latest abortion thread. You had asked why enough women don’t oppose abortion restrictions to make it impossible pass those laws. I was ready to post “Well, I think I read that women tend to be more anti-abortion than men. Here’s a cite.” And, then I went looking for a cite, and it turned out I was dead wrong.
Yes. In this Star Trek thread, I went looking for a cite and found less than I hoped (I still found some, so my position moved from “I think this is true” to “I’m not quite certain”)
This should be applauded to the high heavens. It is exactly the test that we should apply to ourselves to ensure we are being intellectually honest, i.e. “what would it take to change my mind”?
The answer should always be “solid evidence that I’m willing to look at”.
Sadly, all too often the response is “nothing, the issue is settled and you are problematic for even suggesting otherwise” and no meaningful discussion can be had, and certainly no learning can take place.