Yes. But I think polarization is better than a continued creeping loss of truth.They kind of go hand in hand, don't they?
They kind of go hand in hand, don’t they?They sure do; like Lausten and the truth fairy.
Who are you asking this? If you are asking lovescience2020, you’ll never really know. There is no way to get inside someone’s head and find out if they are lying purposefully, or if they are honestly confused by a video like this. We can do all the analyzing we want, and we could even be right, but when you go to the individual, you can’t know, and often, they can’t accurately report what is going on in their own head.Agreed. I can't tell if OP is pro intelligent design or against it or if he's just curious about evolution in general. Either way, he was given some info that might steer him in the right direction, and that's about all you can do.
CitizensChallenge is overreacting like somebody who takes online interaction too seriously and has trouble accepting the inevitable uncertainty and goofiness that comes with the internet – and that can be even more harmful to discussion than trolling.
TimB: I think polarization is better than a continued creeping loss of truth.Lausten: They kind of go hand in hand, don’t they?
TimB: What goes hand in hand is that the LIARS of the right, are tolerated, by would be moderates, as equal to the forces of truth on the left. It is the right and their current Champion, the biggest LIAR of all, who use polarization so effectively, because the left is expected by the middle to not only be rational but to also be mild and non-emotional. But emotional is what the mostly apathetic middle winds up responding to.
CitizensChallenge is overreacting like somebody who takes online interaction too seriouslyNah, I'm just overreacting because I'm watching us destroying our planet and civil society - oh the constant flow of calculated malicious lies that have come normalize and given a free pass - that really pisses me off too.
What I’m having trouble with is the ease with which honesty, constructive debate, which require a good faith effort to truthfully represent both sides, has been tossed out the window.
Not to mention the collective decision to ignore the Earth’s biosphere and how dependent we are upon its good health.
Hatred and ignorance as an accepted political tool.
etc., etc., etc.
Oh, anger and hatred are not the same thing! Seems to me anyone that isn’t angry ain’t paying attention.
Tim, thanks for speaking up, you have a nice way with words. Me guess at this point I’m just being overwhelmed by the shear volume of malicious willful ignorance and Democrats continued ineptness.
blah blah blah there’s always descending into utter hopelessness and simply giving up. Seems to be working for way too folks out there.
Friends. I come here because it’s an oasis of sanity. Seeing the scrapping makes me sad.
Let’s not let frustration caused by the people we disagree with tear us apart. It’s one of the many ways they can win.
CC is passionate and emotional. Lausten is clinical and detached. In my opinion, both styles are effective to differing degrees in different circumstances, and both of you have made good points in this little spat. (I absolutely fall into the CC camp when it comes to how the emotional impact of a message influences my response, but I try to be more Lausten-like in order to communicate more effectively.)
There is no way to know with absolute certainty if someone is being intentionally ignorant and there is no ‘right’ answer when dealing with intentionally ignorant people.
Hopefully lovescience lives up to his name and starts to think like a scientist
Thanks 3pt. I’ve been like this from the very time I managed to engage some non-believers on SkepticForum. I was a liberal Christian at the time and got them talking about “should be nice”. It went about the same as here.
Great input from you. Sometimes you gotta moderate the moderator!
Something I haven’t said, that needs to be said, CC, go ahead and spew whatever you want anywhere you want. But if you comment on what I say or do, don’t tell me why I’m wrong and expect anything but my opinion in return. If I’m not indicating that I’m hearing you, that’s my bad, but I think I’ve been clear that I am listening.
The best example of this is MLK and Malcom X. We know they met, we know they didn’t agree on tactics, but we also know they didn’t spend a lot of time critiquing each other publicly. I think they understood how the extreme position helps support the moderate position. We also know Kennedy and Johnson were doing the same thing, meeting with MLK in private and telling him they supported him, but they had to be even more moderate with their voters. Those we have tapes, they were released 10 years ago or so.
Lausten: "I’ve been like this from the very time I managed to engage some non-believers on SkepticForum. I was a liberal Christian at the time and got them talking about “should be nice”. It went about the same as here."I don't know where you get your Zen, Lausten, but I could use some [actually, all] of it.
Although many of us on here have similar views, our personalities and communication styles differ greatly. On the plus side, it makes this place a lot more interesting than if we were all clones, but it can also lead to relatively trivial misunderstandings getting out of hand if not reigned in.
CC, not that it’s much consolation, but I totally get where you’re coming from. The insanity of our fellow citizens is threatening to pull the world down around us, and keeping calm while it happens is like keeping calm while people set fire to your house while your family is in it - it’s impossible.
I try to distance myself from social media to avoid unpleasant conversations. It’s no fun pretending I don’t see how the world and society is being destroyed, but I can’t say things very diplomatically when the other person is fighting for our mutual destruction.
I don’t know where you get your Zen, Lausten, but I could use some [actually, all] of it.I think it stems from realizing what a total dick I've been much of my life. I was one of those kids destroying the fabric of society for my first quarter of a life, and that's in both ways, as one born with a silver spoon, and a rebel without a clue. I got married to the wrong woman, but I did get a job like a normal person. Oh wait, I worked for United Health Care, denying people care and helping some guy get rich while he was violating SEC regulations. Oh, it gets better. I found a church. A liberal church, welcoming gays and building community. Unless of course you weren't gay and didn't like gays, then, stay the F out of our church. But, I did find the right woman there and we've had 15 years of marital bliss. We were married in 2000 :). Now, I'm witnessing everyone around me act like me at age 18. My mother's memory is going, my aunts and uncles no longer supply moral wisdom, just bad memes, my President, you know that one. And what did I do? I learned about logical fallacies and called people names in the most uppity way possible, by saying they were guilty of an argument from ignorance! I'm a regular fountain of wisdom. I think I'll write a book. Oh, right, I'm doing that because I think I have something to contribute to humanity.
I like the MLK/Malcom X analogy. I think MLK was a welcome alternative, for white people, back in the day. Thus MLK’s message and acceptance were enhanced by the more ominous and almost militant attitude of Malcom X.
Keep being MLK. Hopefully you can skip the part where he was assassinated and just attain the esteem and acceptance of your message.
But since your contribution to humanity is not equality for blacks, but rather the support of truth over lies, the Malcom X character represents the more militant version of the support of truth, and the liar righties represent LIES.
I do not envy your position of trying to be a moderator between truth and LIES. You seem to be a proponent of truth, yet you are compelled, it seems, to give the LIARS equal respect and opportunity. It must be tough. Maybe it is a crucially needed role. But it seems, to me, like a failing strategy these days.
Hang in there.
Meanwhile, CC and I are seeing so many chickens come home to roost, that there is no place to sit. Yet the liars just keep inviting more and more chickens back.
I was one of those kids destroying the fabric of society for my first quarter of a life, and that’s in both ways, as one born with a silver spoon, and a rebel without a clue.Interesting.
Your take on things gives the impression of some who was born rich and tries to make amends for it in a sense. This seems to be a pretty common thing among liberals in general. Latte Liberals.
Most people can’t relate to it though, so its always going to fail.
Now that I think about it, maybe that’s what is happening today with liberals.
@thatoneguy: Your take on things gives the impression of some who was born rich and tries to make amends for it in a sense.
Does it make sense that someone born with a silver spoon have to work for United Health Care? It could be tin and not silver.
Does Queen Elizabeth feel a need to make amends?
Lausten: I was one of those kids destroying the fabric of society for my first quarter of a life, and that’s in both ways, as one born with a silver spoon, and a rebel without a clue.Oneguy: Your take on things gives the impression of some who was born rich and tries to make amends for it in a sense. This seems to be a pretty common thing among liberals in general. Latte Liberals.
Most people can’t relate to it though, so its always going to fail.
Now that I think about it, maybe that’s what is happening today with liberals.
TimB: Oneguy. You are so full of it. You will grasp at any straw to support your extreme right view of politics. Really?, more Dems than RepugLIARS are born rich? Don’t show me where you pulled that out of. (I don’t want to see your private hole).
I don’t think there was a silver anything in my family, much less a silver baby spoon when I was born. If some people born rich also grow up to be liberal and progressive, must it be because they felt guilty, rather than feel caring for others?
I think that most people do care about other people (besides just your family and maybe tribe). The fact that you cannot relate to that, does not mean that most people can’t. Look at the Presidential votes over the last 30ish years. Who got the MAJORITY of the people’s vote? The liberal candidate. Every time, except W’s 2nd term election (during a war). And W was a veritable liberal compared to what we have today.
Your take on things gives the impression of some who was born rich and tries to make amends for it in a sense. This seems to be a pretty common thing among liberals in general. Latte Liberals.It figures that you would react to me sharing some personal details with a broad generalization on your view of "liberals". Your comment says nothing about me, but quite a bit about you, oneguy.
I was UMC, which isn’t “most people”, but it’s the entire suburbia, and a big chunk of those who vote. It’s where kids often work at the businesses that their parent’s (and friends of their parent’s) own, so actually, they relate to a wide swath of Americana. I could go a mile or so in one direction and go bowling alongside blue collars, or a few miles in another direction and see the lake homes where the really rich lived.
Now that I think about itYeah, this seems like something you haven't given much thought
Here’s Karl Popper basically predicting social media discussion. It’s not new obviously, it’s just the medium makes it easier, and once it started, it was encouraged by the early adopters.
Someone who uses human flourishing as their lodestone is seen as fake by those who would rather use politics and money.
It’s hard [impossible, in my experience] to communicate the fact that sacrificing your ‘stuff’ (money, time, resources, etc.) for the benefit of those who don’t have those things usually makes life better for everyone, including those sacrificing their ‘stuff’. People either get it or they don’t - there’s no changing of opinion on this topic for some reason.
So truth and honesty are totally superfluous.
Lausten advises me that we can never tell what is inside a person, (seems like something an academic could imagine, but for someone who’s lived on the streets and been exposed to many people, I know you’d better try to calculate what’s going on inside their heads - unless you want to be nothing more than a victim.)
So liberals need to learn shut up lay down and allow ourselves to be steamrolled while the Alt-Right
Don’t ask why the Alt-right is allowed build up their one-dimensional airtight case against science and rationality and humanism - Oh and we simply need to get over the fact that they consistency misrepresent our words and deeds and the reality of physical facts. That honest and integrity is a joke and power is all that matters.
Talk about a knockout punch. Lausten and pals you’ve done an excellent job of pointing out the utter useless of doing anything but going along with the flow. Hell maybe CFI should start advertising for the Epoch Times, bet it’ll increase CFI revenue stream and participation - can find all sort of new pals for our srees and guys.
It’s one thing when it comes from our clowns, but quite another when the people one respects roll over.
I know, I know, I simply need to adjust myself to utter hopelessness and our descent into the world of Mad Max.
CC, I honestly don’t think anyone here is rolling over.
Your fiery wrath is fun to read and inspires me to be more outspoken and less timid, but it changes no one’s mind. There’s a time and a place for different types of messaging, and what is most suited to a situation is a personal decision. You and Lausten simply have different opinions on when a scorched earth method should be used.
Without knowing the mind of the person you’re talking to, using the scorched earth method might turn-off someone you potentially could have reached. The person who started this thread is, in my opinion, not going to be swayed by any arguments, but I don’t know that. Maybe if you had let him hang himself a little more, you could have chewed him up with no comment, but not everyone was ready to throw in the towel.
I see ads (well, five seconds worth, which is when I can skip it) for the Epoch Times on YouTube once every week or two, but have never looked into them. They seem way too right-wing for me to stomach, so I haven’t invested the time.