House of Eratosthenes

I don’t generally approve of pronouncing the other side to be unworthy-of-debating. That’s their tactic. That’s what losers do. You debate if you can, and if you can’t, you come up with these rationalizations about why the debate is not possible — what they do. All the time. I just don’t think it’s productive for both sides to stoop to that level.

But, I can’t say it’s any more productive to do what I’ve been doing, either. I like the idea of imposing a litmus test. “I live in the other world, where people actually build things that have to work, that other people can use…as such, my time is valuable. So before we go further, a litmus-test question: What is better, a Mom and Dad married to each other, neither of whom has ever had sex with anybody else, with two virgin teenage children, living in the 1950’s…or a single-mom, now, with four kids by four different guys, depending on a dizzying kaleidoscope of government programs? In which household do the kids have a better shot spending their formative years?”

That does effectively separate out the slightly-lefty-leaning types, the fresh recruits, who still might be saved — from the crazies.

Does this mean you’re going to ban the idiot Cuttlefish?

Pretty much every single thread here for the last several months has been those retards going round and round and round (and round and round and round) spouting every cliche in the The Big Book of Trolling. They can’t reason — hell, they can’t read — and they can’t argue in good faith.

They’re the crazies. The converted. Ban ’em, and let them cut-n-paste their vintage 2005 marxoid gibberish somewhere else. I bet that Ed Darrell moron would love to have ’em — they can have little hissy slap fights over who thinks of the children more.
- Severian | 04/20/2014 @ 17:20
It might be productive — less un- productive — to simply make a list of all the falsehoods one must indulge in order to “rationally” conclude that their arguments should prevail. By “rationally” I mean, through some thought process, any thought process, anything more disciplined than what comes naturally: “Aiiigh, I’m so sick of this, just let them win so they’ll go away” which is obviously the tactic they’ve settled on using against people who have real work that has to get done.

Such a list would cut to the heart of the matter: How their beliefs are not only confined to the stately pleasure dome of intellectuals, whose ideas never meet up with reality; but must remain confined there, It could also be recycled to deal with others arguing from within that pleasure dome. And, let’s just admit it, there are a lot of other loud, argumentative people in there. Captain Capitalism, I think, was not just talking about The Zachriel. It’s one of the burdens we carry living in a technologically advanced civilization, we get to live among people with bad ideas that don’t work, in fact those people don’t work any better than their ideas do…but they feel like they’re right about everything, and if ever there are any doubts emerging, they can just recite the ideas all over again like a magical incantation and that will make everything all MoarBetter.

With no natural predators or any other natural dangers, cupboards full, and if they’re not then Carl’s Junior and Starbucks are just around the corner, bottled water delivered to the doorstep; why should anyone lose any confidence in an idea just because the idea hasn’t been successfully tested? There’s no incentive for skepticism, the smart-filters have been removed by the naturally ascending standard of living.
- mkfreeberg | 04/21/2014 @ 06:28
Let’s see, we can start with:

1. If the dictionary offers a definition for things like “liberal” and “conservative,” other words we know for a fact have changed meaning over the past few years and decades, but the dictionary definition has remained static throughout that time…we must ignore the benefits of our experience and rely, completely, on definitions we know to be obsolete.

2. You have to “provide support for you positions,” all your positions, even empirical observations. This doesn’t mean pointing out matters of fact. You have to defend them as if they are not matters of fact. And “defend” has something to do with an Internet nerd-slap-fight. In other words, aesthetics of an argument trump fact, not the other way around.

3. “Defend” does not, however, mean anything more strenuous than a statement dealing entirely with passive voice. “Seems [to us anonymous people, you don’t even know how many of us there are] that…” “Everybody knows…” “Nobody outside a right wing echo chamber thinks…”

I’m sure there are more items, and I’m sure the list would eventually become the credo of those who never have to endure the exigencies of seeing their ideas tested in the real world.
- mkfreeberg | 04/21/2014 @ 06:34
I see your point. I really do. But those (say) six things, once identified, compose the entirety of the “I’m liberal because I’m smart, M-O-O-N, that spells smart” credo. They’re an admittedly extreme example — they’re the only ones who literally cut and paste their bullshit instead of just repeating it — but that also makes them infinitely more tedious than Our average workaday Betters. There’s no possible way for the adults to have a discussion — it’s just “we don’t understand that” and “common usage” etc. all the way down.

I dunno… maybe put them on a limit or something? Like “y’all must say something substantive at least once every six posts to be allowed to continue commenting on this thread.” The compilation of the Big Book O’ Trolling can continue, it might not be so teeth-pullingly excruciating for regular and drive-by readers, and who knows? they might actually learn something. Well, probably not learn something, but at least their ctrl-v keys will get a break.
- Severian | 04/21/2014 @ 07:50
The worst thing I notice about The Zachriel is that they are forever re-litigating the same issues, which prevents any substantial discussion or exploration of the current topic. They’re actually masterful at it: they drop one of their multiply-discredited bon mots and start the blather-go-round all over again, and before we know it we’re talking about the same four things in current threads that we beat beyond death in threads from two years ago.

I’d propose this as the trigger – no endless rehashing. The moment the bats come out for the poor dead horse, we stop the experiment. Force them to stay on track. I think that if the World of Words is the only one they acknowledge, then we apply Morgan’s concept of “real world consequences” to this world and see if it’s effective – if we already talked about something then we don’t spend fifty or sixty comments reopening that topic, and only refer to it at all, in passing, if it’s relevant to the current discussion. And if that relevance is quickly found wanting, we don’t continue.
- nightfly | 04/21/2014 @ 10:54
I’d go with that. I love this blog, and I’m grateful for the privilege of doing so. But these idiots suck the fun out of everything, and make meaningful discussion impossible.*

Which I suppose is the point — frustrate everyone into leaving, then declare victory.

*Which makes me wonder which came first, the “personality” or the politics. Do poorly socialized, obnoxious, pseudo-intellectual losers gravitate towards leftism because it gives them an outlet for their poo-flinging impulses, or did leftism devolve into poo-flinging because of all the poorly socialized, obnoxious, pseudo-intellectual losers who joined up?
- Severian | 04/21/2014 @ 11:26
What is better, a Mom and Dad married to each other, neither of whom has ever had sex with anybody else, with two virgin teenage children, living in the 1950′s

Change that to the 1980s-1990s and you would have described my sister, her husband and their two kids, plus the spouses of said children.
- Physics Geek | 04/21/2014 @ 12:57

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Mentally Deficient…You Might as Well be Arguing With a TreeSunday, April 20th, 2014

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