Warp wrote:
> andrel <a_l### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>>>   Btw, why is it that every time I express my opinion that we should
>>> respect other people and not make fun of them nor insult them, I get
>>> strong opposition? This is something that always keeps puzzling me.
>>>
>> My guess is that it is the way you express that opinion.
> 
>   And my guess that part of the problem is that people want to read
> more than there is. In this case they wanted to see me defending young
> earth creationism only because I opposed page which sole purpose seemed
> to be to mock some museum dedicated to that, even though I made quite
> clear that I opposed only the mockery, the making fun of other people,
> nothing else.
> 
>   In other cases, however, I just can't understand it. For example if
> I say that we should not make fun of the head of state of another country,
> people opposed me like mad. No rational explanation for that came up in
> the lengthy flamewar. I still can't understand this.
> 
In most cases it is because you seem to be able to phrase your arguments 
in such a way that you annoy people. You also seem totally unaware that 
if you offend someone it is civil to apologize. In stead you fall back 
on "I did not mean to offend, so I don't have to apologize" which 
degenerates in a few posts to calling the offended stupid because he 
does not understand you did not mean it, or something that amounts to 
the same. You probably disagree, but IMHO your ability to understand 
other peoples feeling is below average. That in itself should not have 
to be a problem. If I take an on-line test to see if I am autistic I am 
on the wrong side of the line too. And so will be a large proportion of 
the people here. But there is no problem as long as you know it for 
yourself. If you had backed off in these discussions after a few 
iterations thinking "oops I did it again" *) it would have never 
deteriorated into a flamewar. The sad thing of course is that many 
people agree with you, but don't want to step into your flamewars for no 
good reason. Hence you feel frustrated that nobody else sees the 
obvious. Which enrages you even more ...

Disclaimer: this is based on a variety of observations over many years, 
I won't give any specific examples because you will then show that in 
your opinion I am wrong in that specific case. ;)
Ok, you talked me into it, one small recent one. At the end of a lengthy 
discussion on evolution and if there are other possibilities, you came 
up with nothing better than that every theory may in the end turn out to 
be false. What on earth were you thinking? That we are a bunch of 
uneducated stupid morons? Have you never contemplated that we all know 
that and that when you start a flamewar using only that as ammunition 
it'll take us a lot of iterations to understand that you really mean 
just that? Not because we disagree, but because it is so basic that it 
is incredible offensive to use it as a trump card. Surely Warp with his 
level of intelligence knows better than that... 5 levels deeper: oops he 
didn't. I still can't really believe it and the evidence suggests that 
you managed to annoy even Gilles with that one.

If you feel offended by this one: I am sorry, I did not mean it that way.

*) totally aside, I have never been able to find the 'reflective spears 
on a checkered plane' again. Somebody once did that, years ago. I think 
it was around the time of the 'checkered spear on a reflective plane' 
(the wood implement) and other silly RSOCP variants.

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