On Board Decorum

[ZenMode]

cincydog? That you?

No! But I'm a fan of cincy. He's a mod on CFB51.com's political forum.

 

[ZenMode]

That doesn't apply to science, only math. Science is best available knowledge just like everything else.

I agree, but science has an unbiased culture of thorough review, correction and criticism. Politics doesn't. Political news coverage is getting further and further from that, at least partially it seems, due to Trump.

So, what does it mean to say "we aren't free to make up our own facts" when a lot of what we have is biased reporting from often self-serving and biased sources?

 

[ZenMode]

I can't speak for anyone here, but I have said it before and say it again...let Super be Super

and Super, get your hand fixed. The board benefits from your posts. As far as your arrogance ? The great philosopher Dizzy Dean once said, "It ain't bragging if you can do it " You do it, my brother !

Let everyone be everyone! This isn't life or death. It's not even important in the grand scheme of things. It's like professional sports - entertainment.

 

[gtyellowjacket]

I can't speak for anyone here, but I have said it before and say it again...let Super be Super

and Super, get your hand fixed. The board benefits from your posts. As far as your arrogance ? The great philosopher Dizzy Dean once said, "It ain't bragging if you can do it " You do it, my brother !

Not my favorite poster, but certainly doesn't effect my life if he comes back. With that said, as an empathetic human being, if he is getting so upset he is physically harming himself, dude needs to find a different hobby. The board is going to post things he doesn't like unless we're going back to the old board style.

 

[Enigma94]

Not my favorite poster, but certainly doesn't effect my life if he comes back. With that said, as an empathetic human being, if he is getting so upset he is physically harming himself, dude needs to find a different hobby. The board is going to post things he doesn't like unless we're going back to the old board style.

You posted all your stupid shit on the old board too, so fuck off with your whole woe is me schtick.

 

[gtyellowjacket]

You posted all your stupid shit on the old board too, so fuck off with your whole woe is me schtick.

This is an example of what not to do on the new board, especially on the decorum thread.

 

[Enigma94]

This is an example of what not to do on the new board, especially on the decorm and thread.

I don't care one whit what an ignoramus like yourself thinks. You are one of the ones who pestered super in the first place. Your takes are consistently shit and the board would be better off without you.

 

[SnoopRob]

I can see this thread is going to be a shining light of how board decorum should work.

 

[donbosco]

So I have been debating and discussing on The Internets since 1991 (then called usenet), meaning back when a lot of you were nothing but random molecules spread all over. I debated creationists on Talk.Origins after that, and debated philosophy on other sites--where people can get really, really mean discussing stuff like truth and will and language. Through all that, decorum is something like the question of what is art (I know it when I emote it).

In all that participation I have used some insults in choice spots, and my personal view of the art of this kind of board debating is that there are in fact choice spots, but it must be part of an argument about what someone is not just ignorant about, but displaying a willful and obnoxious ignorance. Seeing an ongoing tactic to replace failed arguments with a "fix" to troll and annoy, and then I may respond by saying something about "the person, not the argument" in that case. This is viewed as wrong in academic debate of course. But I am telling you that among the highest of the highfalutin academics, it still happens, often with exquisite relish and flair, and in peer reviewed published stuff as well. Emotion motivates debate for people of all intelligence levels and skills at expressing themselves.

Do I think any debate on any level is better without personal invective? Yes, it can be, but it's also, in any debate of real importance, that emotion-free zone is something like a long speech in total monotone. Less of is better for the same reason: all personal invective all the time also loses all force and utility. To quote a brilliant Neil Peart lyric it's like "voices in a hurricane." So my idea of a moderator is that she has an impossible job leading and sorting, making impossible-to-be-consistent maddening decisions all over the place. Have fun.

But I do think, always, a post with nothing but stupid insults has no purpose and should be zapped into nothingness. That is what caused me to report one of those yesterday.

Superb post. Kudos.

 

[Centerpiece]

I agree that there are facts. 2 + 2 = 4. A water molecule is 2 Hydrogens and 1 Oxygen. The problem is, 99.999% of political topics are either opinion based (abortion) or don't have anything close to the level of transparent and obvious truth of math and science.

In the cases where we aren't solving an equation and don't have first hand experience, we have to rely on a person or, in most cases, a chain of people for information and facts. Who are those people that we trust, absolutely, to provide facts?

Who are these people to trust for info and facts you ask? Personally I trust my own eyes and ears to discern fact from fiction. After that, my long time trusted friends, family and colleagues. I also usually adhere to age-old adages like: “if it looks too good to be true, it probably isn’t” and “follow the money”.

I terms of “news sources” of which I’ve drawn the petty conclusion you’re referring, I trust Reuters and the AP wire services. As far as legacy news sources I would be more ready to trust CBS in terms of TV platforms as opposed any cable TV source. But here you have to look behind the curtain and see what entity actually pulls the purse strings. A deep dive on CBS reveals those purse strings are tied to one Shari Redstone. A conservative who vows to launch a new station to rival Fox News (which of course is an oxymoron as they are an entertainment company who was successfully sued for $3/4 Billion for LYING on air, pretending to be an actual news source).

As a retired school teacher, I’m more likely to follow my fellow colleagues in education… therefore I prefer Dr. Heather Cox Richardson in terms of a news letter or daily podcasts.

I sleep well at night knowing my trusted sources for facts and the truth are well established and above reproach.

 

[nycfan]

This is an example of what not to do on the new board, especially on the decorum thread.

Have to agree with GTY on this one. It would be much appreciated if we all worked not to bring festering grudges from the old ZZLP over here -- as I've said a few times before, there will be plenty of opportunities to build new ones here without re-litigating decades of ish from IC and elsewhere. And maybe, just maybe, we could all try to disagree the same amount but with 50% less rancor for a week or so just to see how that feels.

 

[nycfan]

I don't care one whit what an ignoramus like yourself thinks. You are one of the ones who pestered super in the first place. Your takes are consistently shit and the board would be better off without you.

@Enigma94, I sincerely request that you tone it down on this thread, as a start.

 

[Geisterfahrer]

I apologize for not living up to the spirit of this thread.

 

[Enigma94]

@Enigma94, I sincerely request that you tone it down on this thread, as a start.

If GT will stop shit posting you won't hear a peep from me.

 

[Badbehavior1015]

Are you another one afraid to make a specific argument? Make your case and I'll be as direct as you can stand.

Nothing specific. I just see your comments sometimes being hypocritical, as I showed in an earlier post. I surmise you have anger issues and have no other outlet than this board. I hope posting on here, at least in some aspect, makes you feel somewhat at ease or in control.

 

[ZenMode]

If GT will stop shit posting you won't hear a peep from me.

 

[Badbehavior1015]

"we’re all free to assume our own positions on the issues"

We really aren't, but that's a different discussion.

"but we’re not free to create our own facts."

The obvious question is where do "facts" come from? Who or what is the ultimate arbiter of truth and why?

Great question! Who decides the truth? Unless there is empirical evidence, everything else is opinion. Telling someone they are wrong when their belief is based on their experiences and your belief is based on your experiences, is hypocritical.

 

[ZenMode]

Who are these people to trust for info and facts you ask? Personally I trust my own eyes and ears to discern fact from fiction. After that, my long time trusted friends, family and colleagues. I also usually adhere to age-old adages like: “if it looks too good to be true, it probably isn’t” and “follow the money”.

I terms of “news sources” of which I’ve drawn the petty conclusion you’re referring, I trust Reuters and the AP wire services. As far as legacy news sources I would be more ready to trust CBS in terms of TV platforms as opposed any cable TV source. But here you have to look behind the curtain and see what entity actually pulls the purse strings. A deep dive on CBS reveals those purse strings are tied to one Shari Redstone. A conservative who vows to launch a new station to rival Fox News (which of course is an oxymoron as they are an entertainment company who was successfully sued for $3/4 Billion for LYING on air, pretending to be an actual news source).

As a retired school teacher, I’m more likely to follow my fellow colleagues in education… therefore I prefer Dr. Heather Cox Richardson in terms of a news letter or daily podcasts.

I sleep well at night knowing my trusted sources for facts and the truth are well established and above reproach.

Out of curiosity, and because I'm looking for another good liberal podcaster (Ezra Klein doesn't podcast often), I listened to part of an interview with Jon Stewart with HCR about the Trump win. I'll listen to more of her; she seems pretty intelligent.

So, back to the question of what it means to say "we aren't free to make up our own facts".....

There are people and podcasters and news sources that I generally trust for "facts" and others that I trust for good insight and analysis. In either case, none of them, except maybe Ted Cruz, has direct, first-person knowledge of the topic or situation, right? No matter who it is, that entity is getting info from someone who might be getting info from someone who has first person knowledge, but that often isn't even true. So, what does it mean to say something is truly a "fact"?

 

[Enigma94]

You seem to have a weird fetish for saying this when nobody is upset. Maybe there are some underlying issues there.

 

[an0maly]

I don't get angry about message boards posts; I once did.



But I do experience something in the brain like mild stomach upset, and Zen's posts above have done it again on the chase for infallibility. Above, as he did in comments on climate, he tries to offer confusion about a tilt towards a kind of personal infallibalism requirement for others. There is not a realm of actual, useful real world knowledge that ever depends on being infallible, but the requirement is that well-formed belief of the highest value is knowledge, which is justified (to the best we can do) true belief. With knowledge, we can persuade others and improve the world.

Let's say you're in a soundproof basement with no windows and have seen no weather reports, and you say believe it's raining. A friend goes upstairs and checks. If not, your belief was unjustified and false. If it is raining it's a true belief but as a lucky guess, the belief is unjustified. If you had prayed to Jesus for rain and believed it was happening for that reason, to any test anyone can do, your belief was also true but unjustified. What we want is objective testing to work towards true beliefs that are both true and justified.



The center there is knowledge, in the practical world we are all a part of, this is formulated as justified true belief. It's an ideal to reach for, done by combining the three realms in this Venn diagram. I and many others intuit the world is a far better place if people almost entirely have justified true beliefs, rather than beliefs from one or two realms there alone. On deeper analysis there can be specific confounds here, but for general purposes this is what you want in life.

We can apply justification from personal perception, from the use of sound logic, and if needed from expertise, including consensus of scientific expertise. Doing this is highly justified from the interconnection of science and its scientific method, which is founded on objective testing, and findings replication. If something remains too contentious in current science, then we admit there is no justified belief yet.

Speculation is not knowledge, but can be an important mode of thought, a kind of placeholder, temporary stand in for belief, and it can have or lack information to back it up. Free speculation without backup is creative, sometimes fun (there might be flying antarctic giraffes), and it can be grounded in ways that even have value (there could be needed mineral sources beneath the Moon's surface) as a pointer to taking various actions.

Both saying you believe or reject something on faith alone and saying you believe or reject something based on a requirement of infallibility are tactics to ruin the very idea of knowledge, and try to invalidate its pursuit. These are tactics, as I have said, that are often an escape route (actually a pretend escape route) when a person is losing a debate in which they nurture an unjustified belief.