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On 20/08/2012 09:34 PM, Stephen wrote:
> On 20/08/2012 8:59 PM, clipka wrote:
>> Am 20.08.2012 21:07, schrieb Stephen:
>>> On 20/08/2012 2:34 PM, Warp wrote:
>>>> There are many, many arguments that can be used against the conspiracy
>>>> theory
>>>
>>> IMO there is only one:
>>> F' off you idiot.
>>
>> Well, it seems to be the only /effective/ at least.
>>
>
> Doing anything other than that only encourages them. IME
DO NOT FEED THE TROLL.
Seriously. Anybody stupid enough to believe this in the first place
clearly /wants/ to believe it. quod enim mavult homo verum esse, id
potius credit. If somebody /wants/ something to be true, it is pointless
to try to prove that it is false.
(Alternatively, some probably don't /believe/ it to be true, but pretend
they do just so they can argue about it on Internet forums... It is
equally pointless to try to win that argument.)
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On 8/21/2012 1:05 AM, Invisible wrote:
> On 20/08/2012 09:34 PM, Stephen wrote:
>> On 20/08/2012 8:59 PM, clipka wrote:
>>> Am 20.08.2012 21:07, schrieb Stephen:
>>>> On 20/08/2012 2:34 PM, Warp wrote:
>>>>> There are many, many arguments that can be used against the conspiracy
>>>>> theory
>>>>
>>>> IMO there is only one:
>>>> F' off you idiot.
>>>
>>> Well, it seems to be the only /effective/ at least.
>>>
>>
>> Doing anything other than that only encourages them. IME
>
> DO NOT FEED THE TROLL.
>
> Seriously. Anybody stupid enough to believe this in the first place
> clearly /wants/ to believe it. quod enim mavult homo verum esse, id
> potius credit. If somebody /wants/ something to be true, it is pointless
> to try to prove that it is false.
>
> (Alternatively, some probably don't /believe/ it to be true, but pretend
> they do just so they can argue about it on Internet forums... It is
> equally pointless to try to win that argument.)
>
Actually, it depends on the moron. Some people don't change their
opinion, and/or look for real facts, until ***after*** they realize
that, "Yeah, I guess a lot of people don't agree with my, I wonder why
that is?" But, its hard to tell the difference between a sheltered fool,
and an internet troll, since they both tend to babble the same BS, often
even persistently. Its not until weeks, months, or even years, later,
when one comes back and says, "You people where the first ones to really
challenge me, and come right out as say I was being an idiot.", that you
can tell which is which some times.
And, no, this isn't just anecdotal. There are people that have admitted
it was being so challenged that led to them to really looking at why
people disagreed with them. Its often the first nail, or the last, in
the coffin, of their "assumption" that, since everyone is being so nice
every place else, some subject is an matter of opinion, not fact, and
that their side of it might actually be right. As some have described
it, "Not everyone can be reached the same way." Some, I would argue,
have been so sheltered in their own, and semi-related, communities, that
the mere fact that someone not only doesn't agree, but flat out denies
the reality of their position, and doesn't take it seriously at all, is
a complete shock to them.
This is hardly a surprise, when everyone from the news media, to most
"discussion forums" try to be fair, and "balanced" to the point of never
calling anything what it really is, and treating every assertion as
something they either can't have an opinion on, as moderator, to
actually serious enough to bother talking about.
Its like the moron recently, Akin, and his nonsense about rape. The
utlra-liberal magazine Huffington Post slapped "sparks controversy" in
the title of their article, at least in the Email blurb for it. As
though, somehow, the fact that some high ranking theocrat said it made
it "possibly true, therefor its worth reporting it as a possible
argument, not as the pure third hand bullshit, that came out of yet one
more 'family first' religious group, who are promoting an idea that has
been both argued, and refuted, over and over again, since some moron
first proposed it, two centuries ago."
No, have the guts to say what is the truth in such case, "You are
talking bullshit, and an idiot for believing it." Give them links,
evidence, facts, etc. to back it up, but don't pull the BS position of,
"Lets sit and chat about it." Because, if you are dealing with someone
that has any hope of being swayed by evidence, pretending that their own
arguments are worth examining and you are merely sharing a different
"opinion" of reality, will only leave them walking away with the false
sense that either a) they won points, or b) you are the one with the
inability to see reality. Any chance you had to present them with the
uncompromising reality that you don't think their opinion is worth
squat, and that their sources are either wrong, misinformed, delusional,
or lying, just walked out the door (or went to find some other
blog/discussion group, where they can be, again, treated like their
opinion is worthy of standing toe to toe with reality).
And, it does work. But it doesn't work with everyone, which is why you
also need to people willing to sit down and, (shudder!) treat some of
them like they have something worth arguing against. It all depends on
who you are dealing with.
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On 21/08/2012 08:35 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Some, I would argue,
> have been so sheltered in their own, and semi-related, communities, that
> the mere fact that someone not only doesn't agree, but flat out denies
> the reality of their position, and doesn't take it seriously at all, is
> a complete shock to them.
I still remember reading "Darwin's Black Box" for the first time, and
being all like "WTF? How can you print such /obviously/ false statements
and claim it to be fact? OMG!"
If you reflect on this for a moment, you will realise that actually
anyone can print anything they like. But /usually/ any book which
purports to contain scientific fact actually /does/. It was rather
shocking (to me) to find one containing such utter gibberish.
I don't mean the fact that the book questions evolution; there are
several /valid/ objections that might be voiced. I mean the way the book
holds up a few examples which fail to demonstrate that evolution doesn't
work, and then says "now that we have PROVED that evolution is false,
and therefore ID is clearly true" - wait, WTF? Are you mental? You
haven't PROVED anything yet! And even if you had, the conclusion does
not follow.
The bit that really gets me is where he points to the definition of the
scientific method and starts complaining that it's "unnecessarily
restrictive" because it doesn't admit magic, supernatural forces, and
deities. Um, yeah, that's /precisely/ what separates science (the thing
that allows the book you wrote to be printed in the first place) from
folklore and myth (which brought with them no process at all).
But I digress...
> No, have the guts to say what is the truth in such case, "You are
> talking bullshit, and an idiot for believing it." Give them links,
> evidence, facts, etc. to back it up, but don't pull the BS position of,
> "Lets sit and chat about it."
Because if you do that, you add legitimacy to their insane claims.
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On Tue, 21 Aug 2012 12:35:52 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Actually, it depends on the moron. Some people don't change their
> opinion,
> and/or look for real facts, until ***after*** they realize that, "Yeah,
> I guess a lot of people don't agree with my, I wonder why that is?" But,
> its hard to tell the difference between a sheltered fool, and an
> internet troll, since they both tend to babble the same BS, often even
> persistently. Its not until weeks, months, or even years, later, when
> one comes back and says, "You people where the first ones to really
> challenge me, and come right out as say I was being an idiot.", that you
> can tell which is which some times.
Another circumstance in which to have a debate like this is when there's
actually an audience. There may be some in the audience who think "this
guy's got a point" but who haven't spoken up. By debating it publicly,
you point out the errors not necessarily for the benefit of the fool
taking the absurdist position, but for those who might be thinking that
the fool has a valid point.
Jim
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Invisible <voi### [at] dev null> wrote:
> Seriously. Anybody stupid enough to believe this in the first place
> clearly /wants/ to believe it.
Not all believers are stupid. Some of them are quite intelligent and
educated. It can simply be that they have been first lured into believing
it, they have become enamored with the feeling of being "in the loop", of
knowing something that the average person does not, and on top of that are
too stubborn to admit that they might be wrong about it (especially if
they have been holding the belief for a long time).
It's also a form of pseudo-intellectualism: They feel really smart and
intelligent when they think that they cannot be fooled by such a
conspiracy, and that they can spot everything that they are trying to
hide but missed.
The big irony in this is, of course, that they don't realize that they
are actually themselves being deluded and fooled by some clever conspiracy
theorists who have carefully and masterfully built an enormous amount of
material that makes it look like there's something going on, using all
the tricks in the book, plus talented presentation, expression skills and
charisma. They don't realize that they are actually being fed a carefully
cherry-picked selection of all available material, filtered through heavy
doses of plausible-sounding explanations, but which are ultimately just a
diversion.
It's like a magic trick: The magician makes you think you are seeing
something when in fact it's something else completely. You might think
that something just disappeared or appeared in front of your eyes, but
it's just deception. The magician skillfully fools you. He makes you look
somewhere else and abuses all the assumptions you make in order to make
the trick work.
In the case of conspiracy theories, sometimes the theorists deliberately
and maliciously do the fooling with full knowledge and intent, but probably
at least as often it's actually unintentional. They make their own
(mistaken) interpretation of something, they add it to their repertoire,
and then their audience believes the same interpretation. There might not
have been deceitful malice behind the interpretation, but the effect still
ends up being the same: Both the conspiracy theorists and his audience get
fooled.
What separates a true, experienced skeptic from a pseudo-intellectual is
that the former has trained himself to doubt hasty assumptions and alleged
explanations without further evidence and study. The true skeptic thinks
like "ok, that sounds interesting and even plausible, but am I just being
fooled by a cherry-picked red herring? Is there another explanation? Is
there perhaps something I don't know about the technology behind this
that's just deceiving me? Has someone else made a better analysis of this?"
Also, a true skeptic is always ready to admit having been wrong. If a
true skeptic was at some point deluded into believing a conspiracy theory,
but then they study the subject and find out that there's nothing to it,
they do not stubborningly hold to it because they fear admitting being
wrong (even to themselves).
--
- Warp
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On 8/21/2012 2:55 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Tue, 21 Aug 2012 12:35:52 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> Actually, it depends on the moron. Some people don't change their
>> opinion,
>> and/or look for real facts, until ***after*** they realize that, "Yeah,
>> I guess a lot of people don't agree with my, I wonder why that is?" But,
>> its hard to tell the difference between a sheltered fool, and an
>> internet troll, since they both tend to babble the same BS, often even
>> persistently. Its not until weeks, months, or even years, later, when
>> one comes back and says, "You people where the first ones to really
>> challenge me, and come right out as say I was being an idiot.", that you
>> can tell which is which some times.
>
> Another circumstance in which to have a debate like this is when there's
> actually an audience. There may be some in the audience who think "this
> guy's got a point" but who haven't spoken up. By debating it publicly,
> you point out the errors not necessarily for the benefit of the fool
> taking the absurdist position, but for those who might be thinking that
> the fool has a valid point.
>
> Jim
>
Actually, most people who are serious about something that religion
apposes avoid public "debates" like the plague. Why? Because they can
trot out 500 bits of nonsense, and you have either a) no time to address
them all, or b) to pick one, which you think is the most important, to
address. After which, they can just declare that you failed to address
the other 499 bullshit statements they made. There is no such thing as a
"public debate" in such contexts, its virtually always a trap, to allow
creationists, or the like to promote a long laundry list of gibberish
statements and positions, and then claim victory, because, instead of an
entire day to address everything that is wrong with everything they
claimed, they only have the same 15 minutes the ass making the claims did.
That is the advantage to forums, instead of live debates. As long as the
moderator is honest, and not deleting comments, etc., there is no time
limits on how long someone has to spend refuting all claims, and people
making them. In a public debate, everything from the time limits, to the
audience, are often intentionally stacked against you, and the number of
claim that must be dealt with, may as well be infinite.
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On Wed, 22 Aug 2012 19:52:08 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Actually, most people who are serious about something that religion
> apposes avoid public "debates" like the plague. Why? Because they can
> trot out 500 bits of nonsense, and you have either a) no time to address
> them all, or b) to pick one, which you think is the most important, to
> address.
Of course, that's the reason Richard Dawkins doesn't debate
creationists. Well, that and he thinks they're idiots not worth his
time. He once said a friend of his said, in response to a request from a
creationist for a debate, "well, that'd look good on your CV, not so good
on mine." His friend declined as well.
Jim
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On 8/22/2012 10:23 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Wed, 22 Aug 2012 19:52:08 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> Actually, most people who are serious about something that religion
>> apposes avoid public "debates" like the plague. Why? Because they can
>> trot out 500 bits of nonsense, and you have either a) no time to address
>> them all, or b) to pick one, which you think is the most important, to
>> address.
>
> Of course, that's the reason Richard Dawkins doesn't debate
> creationists. Well, that and he thinks they're idiots not worth his
> time. He once said a friend of his said, in response to a request from a
> creationist for a debate, "well, that'd look good on your CV, not so good
> on mine." His friend declined as well.
>
> Jim
>
Funny thing is, a blog post I was reading involving some morons
questions to the president and Mr. Etcha-sketch about faith brought up
the comment of which passages, if any, the atheists that posted there
liked. One involved the smell of asses, and the amount of ejaculate a
horse produced, as being comparable to some woman's lovers. lol But the
one that is most appropriate to this, especially given the irony, is:
Proverbs 72:3 - “A fool may ask more questions in an hour than the wise
can answer in seven years.”
I really need to try to remember that one. lol
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On Thu, 23 Aug 2012 11:05:27 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Proverbs 72:3 - “A fool may ask more questions in an hour than the wise
> can answer in seven years.”
>
> I really need to try to remember that one. lol
That is a good one, yes.
Jim
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On 23/08/2012 7:54 PM, Jim Henderson wrote:
> On Thu, 23 Aug 2012 11:05:27 -0700, Patrick Elliott wrote:
>
>> Proverbs 72:3 - “A fool may ask more questions in an hour than the wise
>> can answer in seven years.”
>>
>> I really need to try to remember that one. lol
>
> That is a good one, yes.
>
How about:
If women's tongues can cease for an answer
Macheath, The Beggar's Opera Act II
I've not been brave enough to use it myself.
--
Regards
Stephen
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