I appreciate the intention, Ezio, but that would be self-censorship.

But how else will I yell at Zmaj for being a racist woman-hating fascist?

I don't like censorship or infringement on free speech, but it wouldn't be the end of the world if political discussions were banned.

That's really unfair. What have mods ever done to you that you should curtail their inly pleasure?

Hey I have an idea.

It's crazy I know.

Why not just... encourage good manners?

Good manners used to be a big deal. That was before memes, articles, skewed stats, and trolling became weaponized by ideologies. You could disagree with someone and yet still discuss things like adults. I think the word "civil" has something to do with this.

I think a good deal of the ideas posted on this forum to be wrong, bordering on injurious to a thriving society. I don't really feel comfortable engaging in discussion about any of it, because in my experience I've found that those supporting progressive ideological viewpoint tend to be more vocal, more willing to use polemic tactics, and less willing to engage in reasoned discussion examining everyone's first principles. (Yes, some conservatives are similarly hard-headed, and I don't like that either. But who has the majority on this forum?)

Using ad hominem attacks and invoking censure of specific points of view... isn't good manners.

Rather than ban particular topics of discussion, would it be possible to come up with a consensus on what constitutes good manners? IMO that's a better question to ask. In a public forum such as this, what constitutes "good manners" thus that civil discourse could continue?

You're quite right @teacon7.

Tolerance in the Forum; Intolerance on the Board? The time to lie, cheat and back-bite is in-game (this is Diplomacy, after all) but when the game is done, we kick back and shoot the breeze.

Ultimately, though, we each have to be responsible for our own behaviour - by being courteous and civil - and drawing the Mods' attentions to comments that are inappropriate.

Well said, teacon. Good manners. I'll do my best to follow them. Today's storm in a teacup wouldn't have happened if I didn't react this one time - one time - to some people who routinely call others idiots and assholes. Of course, they are the ones with the thinnest skin.

Shut up, bitch.

It hurts, doesn't it?

oh, please teacon. What a wonderful way to completely ignore history. Besides, who wants to "debate" first principles with people who just make shit up to support their positions? That's not debate, it's nonsense. Want civil debate, the onus is entirely on conservatives. Two ground rules:
1) Renounce the racist, sexist, and homophobic crap.
2) commit to relying only on demonstrable facts, not made up fake news.

Progressives have rightly gotten belligerent for the simple reason that we're pretty damn tired of the violence, racism, sexism, and general assholery of the right wing and see zero reason to have ANY tolerance for it. I didn't see anyone hanging George W Bush in effigy or saying that if you support him your a traitor the the country or that ALL activities of the opposition must be crushed at all costs. Now that we've had to deal with the hate spewed at Obama and that crap around the Iraq War and the nonstop murders of people of color.

You reap what you sow, and payback's a bitch.

1. poisoning the well
2. strawman
3. ad hominem

all in one post. @Ogion never fails to impress me

I've got one more for you too look up JamesYanik

The Fallacy Fallacy

I haven't heard of this one. Can you explain it in really simple terms?

Rather than ban political discussions, let's ban governments, and especially politicians!

Libertarian, live free or die!

"If you're a libertarian when you're 25, you have no heart. If you're a libertarian by the time you're 35, you have no brain." -Winston Churchill

I think you need to edit that a bit.

"If you're a libertarian w̶h̶e̶n̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶2̶5̶,̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶n̶o̶ ̶h̶e̶a̶r̶t̶.̶ ̶I̶f̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶i̶b̶e̶r̶t̶a̶r̶i̶a̶n̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶ ̶y̶o̶u̶'̶r̶e̶ ̶3̶5̶,̶ you have no brain." -Winston Churchill

Fixed

https://www.winstonchurchill.org/resources/quotes/quotes-falsely-attributed

Not only is the qoutation wrong, Churchill didn't even say it. What was that I just read about making shit up?

"Honestly, the attribution of the quotes does not exactly matter to me. What does is that they are aphorisms that prove points regardless of the speaker." -CAPT Brad

@damian

i'm not guilty of that. i haven't presented an alternative argument that is justifying itself because of fallacies, i'm simply presenting a single critique of an argument based off of it's own flaws.

if you're a socialist your age doesn't matter, you have no heart and you have no brain

-JamesYanik

Manwe, I think the Walrus is paraphrasing an old quote and attributing it to Churchill because of his reputation for making those types of memorable statements. The Walrus is allowed, imho, the freedom in this forum with more decorum, to paraphrase in the way he did, it allows him to use an well known proposition about idealism of youth, and intellectual growth or the lack of it.

I'll make the foolish mistake of treating this threads "topic" seriously, and state, No, I disagree with the proposal to ban political discussion from our brave new forum with more decorum.

The humourous(?) or vexatious and malicious slur on the behaviour and, or inclinations of the Almighty Mods is a comment I also disagree with.
Only a fool thinks that the Almighty Mods would want to spend any more time than the necessary minimum spent "policing the forum with more decorum"... dealing with dodgy oil painting, false passport & document advertising, cheating allegations etc.
It's self evident that the Almighty Mods like to be able to spend as much time as possible lounging around in the Omnipotent Zultar's Magic Cave, drinking champagne, eating delicacies and being entertained by scantily clothed dancers & contortionists, jugglers & musicians.

You're suggesting that what he's saying has no merit because it uses fallacies. Or if you're not trying to suggest that you're doing a terrible job of doing so.

@damian

"You're suggesting that what he's saying has no merit because it uses fallacies."


let's analyze this claim of yours, and by doing so, let's make sure we have my original post in mind:

"1. poisoning the well
2. strawman
3. ad hominem

all in one post. @Ogion never fails to impress me"

clearly this is an ironic remark being made against Ogion, and i say that he "never fails to impress me" i am clearly referring to how he structure his arguments. not ONCE do i ever address the content, or the validity of the content: i ONLY address his modus operandi.


"Or if you're not trying to suggest that you're doing a terrible job of doing so."

what? i NEVER ADDRESSED THE CONTENT!!! i ONLY addressed h is methodology. clearly you have read something into what i had posted, because i did a GREAT job of mocking his argumentative technique. (notice i have 3 +1s on that post, while you have none on any of yours)

it is not my burden to make sure nobody subjectively views my statement and misinterprets it (which is exactly what you have done) as a critique on what the author is saying (which i in NO way did).

what you seem to be claiming is that i did a terrible job of NOT saying he has no merit.

but referring back to my original post, this claim is entirely incorrect, as i never addressed the context of his claims, rather how he made them.


read back over what you have written here, and perhaps you've made a simple error @damian, but i have made no such mistake

Literal meaning is ultimately unimportant. What matters is the context. A critique of how something is read usually involves constructive feedback or more detailed responses.

Posting a list of fallacies with a sarcastic quip is a transparent attempt to undermine the argument.

@damian

"Literal meaning is ultimately unimportant. What matters is the context. A critique of how something is read usually involves constructive feedback or more detailed responses.

Posting a list of fallacies with a sarcastic quip is a transparent attempt to undermine the argument."

i entirely agree that context is important. and the context here is that i had NOT been engaged in the thread, i replied only ONCE, and that was to Ogion.

saying that it was a "transparent attempt to undermine the argument." is both right and wrong.

it is RIGHT in the sense that i was attempting to mock him and the way he argues.

it is WRONG in the sense that i was attempting to degrade what he is saying.

so let's look at MORE context: when i TRULY ARGUE post on this forum, it's MASSIVE. i quote EVERY single line, and usually tear is apart piece by piece. what i am doing NOW is an example of me attacking someone based off of their argument.

notice that i made no such attempt to do so against Ogion. so as for context: i'm entirely vindicated. Ogion himself has referred to me as long-winded in the past, and my original post was anything but.


but let's look at something you said: "A critique of how something is read usually involves constructive feedback or more detailed responses."

this is entirely false. this the definition to a CONSTRUCTIVE critique. my critique was a sarcastic quip and was as much meant to chide Ogion as it was to provide humor to the rest of the forum (once again, my 3 +1s prove this empirically)

and then you go on:

"Posting a list of fallacies with a sarcastic quip is a transparent attempt to undermine the argument."

but now you have truly boxed yourself in: i was NOT engaged in an argument, i was making a sarcastic quip about a single claim.

sure, if we were having a direct series of back and forths going, my comment would have been totally meritless within the context of an argument.

however, given the following:

1. i never addressed the context of what he had been saying
2. i never attempted to illicit further response in the form of an argument
3. there is a clear comedic element involved

entirely proves that i was not in fact having any sort of substantive debate with Ogion.


if your problem is that i was too focused on making a joke, and that i should have offered more constructive ways to help Ogion,then at the very least i would be able to tell you to fuck off because this is just a joke on a website.

BUT, you did NOT solely present this as your distaste for my statement:


"to undermine the argument."

here lies the crux of what you said that is so appallingly wrong, and is so obviously read-in.

as i have stated before, i had not been engaged in an argument, and i did not attempt to make a formal engagement in an argument, with Ogion. the fact that you think i was trying to undermine the entirety of what he was saying with a sarcastic remark is as logical as saying that someone waving his hand attempting to ward off of a fly were actually trying to kill it and squash it to death.

as with my analogy: it was nothing more than a passive gesture brushing aside the annoying nature of they fly: or in this case, a passive post, with a hint of irony (which once again only cements the post as non-serious), mocking the laziness of Ogion's post.


but you clearly have a warped view of what i am posting, so let me make this clear:

if i intend to attack someone on the content of their post: i will do it EXACTLY as i am doing it NOW. a line by line analysis and critique with as much objective criticism as possible.

to equate my jokes to my debating style to absolute ludicrousness, which is exactly what you have done

@damian

i dare say that you are quite close to strawman-ing me, as you are assuming my motive was a devaluation as to the content of what @Ogion posted

of course i have in NO WAY addressed the content of @Ogion's post, so you MUST be either assuming my motive, or simply misreading what i posted.

unless there is a third scenario which eludes me, this indicates that you are either intellectually lazy in arguing or intellectually lazy in analysis.

Because a joke can't also be a way of of undermining someones argument. Clearly. /s

Jesus man. Intent only matters so much. Evidently you're unaware of the way your posts are going to interpreted. Plus ones aren't evidence of it being a joke either? People plus one malicious shit on the forum all the time.

@Damian

"Because a joke can't also be a way of of undermining someones argument. Clearly. /s"

I never said a joke CANT be a way (and a bad one at that) of undermining an argument, but i said that my comment was a joke, and in the context of me NOT arguing with him, all this combines to prove that i was NOT guilty of the "fallacy fallacy" of which you accused me of.


"Jesus man. Intent only matters so much. Evidently you're unaware of the way your posts are going to interpreted."

this is entirely inaccurate.

1. it is 100% EVIDENT that i was aware that what i said would be interpreted: as proved my by earlier responses to your addressing this.
2. intent matters MUCH more than someone's subjective view of the situation.

this is actually a quite common problem in the modern PC culture (of which i am not attributing you to, but rather i'm drawing a comparison)

people get offended by statements, that are in no way meant to be offensive.

recently there have been speech codes on college campuses. why? because people get offended by certain words. one such word that has been banned is "slave" because it remind black people of what happened to their ancestors over a hundred years ago.

so if someone were to say that they "hate being a slave to homework" this would be INTERPRETED as offensive, all the while it having no real intent.

drawing this back to what you said, you INTERPRETED my JOKES as an attempt to undermine @Ogion's post.

my intent was never to do so, but for some reason or another YOU looked at a JOKE and thought that this was an attempt at a logical argument, that failed due to the "fallacy fallacy."

since then i have corrected you, but you have made no attempt to rescind your original claim of me using a fallacy in an argument with @Ogion.



"Plus ones aren't evidence of it being a joke either?"

is that a statement or a question? and while your response are heading downhill, i perhaps should clarify: +1s are often given out on substantive remarks, but they're MOST frequently given out on jokes. if you were unaware of this then i apologize on your behalf, but in my cases there is evidence that both what i what i was saying was a joke (as you yourself called it a "sarcastic quip") and that it was well received: hence the +1s



"People plus one malicious shit on the forum all the time."

this is fair, but you yourself said that my post was a sarcastic quip, and in my retort of your overall critique of me i said that the +1s were further evidence of my joke being WIDELY regarded as just that: a joke.

let me give you example:

if i say "A plateau is the highest form of flattery." and that gets +1ed, then we can make a fair assumption that the people +1ing my post are NOT interpreting what i said as an insightful revelation on topography, but rather as it were: a joke.

the fact that i had multiple +1s means MANY people were interpreting it in its most blatant fashion: a joke.

now this is not to say that NOBODY would misconstrue what i said to be an attempt at arguing against @Ogion, but it does speak depths to YOU, as you did NOT see what i said as a joke, but rather demeaned the comment by claiming it was subject to the "fallacy fallacy"

here's a quick experiment: did YOU +1 my post? if you did not, then i would present this as further proof that people regarding my comment saw it in terms of a joke, whereas people who did NOT see my comment in terms of a joke were more likely to respond to it: as one does Naturally in an argument.

my experiment taken in full context of only 58 people being currently logged on, and most likely no more than a dozen on the forum currently.


the problem is that your interpretation of what i said bears no adequate resemblance as to my intent, or to any objective measurement of my statement. there is no logical link between what i said and any sort of valid critique of @Ogion's argument.

but you have decided to pretend this link exists, and i'd very much appreciate it if you'd apologize for attempting to demean my post as being a lazy debate tactic, and we could put this entire thing to rest

speaking of rest: i need sleep. i'll check back in tomorrow morning

Can you put a tldr at the end of all your posts Yanik so I don't have to read through that much bullshit to tell you why you're wrong.

@DO

thanks, but i'm actually not wrong. the thing you're supposed to be offended about is how petty i'm being.

i understand though... a life shouting "i'm a victim, i'm oppressed!" really can bog one down over time.

i hope you get through this presidency with your sanity intact. it's actually quite fun having practice debates with you until someone serious comes along.

but as i said before, rest rest rest

No James.

Imagine for second you've having a debate with a friend (if you can even imagine what having a friend would be like)

When all of a sudden someone wanders into the room and goes: fallacy this, fallacy that, blah blah blah. Pretentious bullshit.

You'd quite rightly assume they were trying to undermine your argument.. Because thats the effect it has on the situation. If you want to continue the debate you now have to deal with the claims that your argument is fallacious, unless you and your friend both agree to ignore the arsehole who wandered into your conversation.

All of this is to say, yeah I interpreted your joke as undermining Ognion's post. Most reasonable people would, it becomes really fucking evident the moment you put it in the context of a real social situation. But maybe you don't understand how those work. Lord knows I don't have time to teach you basic social skills.

Don't expect an apology, I'm lambasting you for wandering into a social situation with the demeanour of a punch drunk ape, and an unlikeable, arrogant one at that.

@MM

But the qoutation is simply wrong, so there is no meaning behind it regardless of who he is attributing it to. It has nothing to do with libertarians. It goes "If you are not a liberal at 25, you have no heart. If you are not a conservative at 35, you have no brain" It's saying young people are liberals because they are emotional, but as you grow older and wiser, you will start using your brain and see conservatives are correct when you think logically about things.

@Ogion - I'm not sure yet if I should respond to your projection and mischaractarization of what I said, or simply thank you for publicly providing living evidence that supports my observations.

@JamesYanik - To be fair, I'm not suggesting that the mods police fallacies qua fallacies. ad hominem is different than a strawman, in that it disrupts the probability of civil discussion. not even zultar can stop people from being illogical. fwiw, I don't think that citing +1's is a very good support for your case... It's an argumentum ad populum or argumentum ad numerum. Can't remember which.

@MajorMitchell - I liked your clever phrase: "brave new forum." fwiw, I suggested that we police *ourselves* in terms of decorum, rather than ask the mods to enforce anything. Their time is better spent dealing with oil paintings of passports, while the basis of a civil society is people governing their own habits and actions, and orienting the same to hospitality towards others.

@damian -
1) You said: "Posting a list of fallacies with a sarcastic quip is a transparent attempt to undermine the argument. "

Good point. So what do you make of Ogion's response to me? Do you think the fallacies in his response to me were similarly trying to undermine my simple call for civility? Why would JamesYanink's fallacy-antics warrant a response from you, but not Ogion's?


2) You said: "When all of a sudden someone wanders into the room and goes: fallacy this, fallacy that, blah blah blah. Pretentious bullshit. You'd quite rightly assume they were trying to undermine your argument.. Because thats the effect it has on the situation. If you want to continue the debate you now have to deal with the claims that your argument is fallacious ..."

What would you do if someone does commits a fallacy in making an argument? I'll happily grant that there are better and worse ways to handle the situation socially, but do you mean to broadly excuse fallacious arguments because pointing them out is uncool?

@Damian

"No James.

Imagine for second you've having a debate with a friend (if you can even imagine what having a friend would be like)"

ad hominem


"When all of a sudden someone wanders into the room and goes: fallacy this, fallacy that, blah blah blah. Pretentious bullshit."

now i have a question: what is the job of a moderator?

a moderator is not supposed to take a side on either issue, but he is supposed to call out inaccuracies that one side presents.

you have wrongfully stuck me on one side of the debate, when in truth i was never really involved with either side of the argument. i saw fallacies in logic: and i pointed them out.


"You'd quite rightly assume they were trying to undermine your argument.. Because thats the effect it has on the situation."

as i said before, this is both right AND wrong. let me quote what I ALREADY SAID:


"it is RIGHT in the sense that i was attempting to mock him and the way he argues.

it is WRONG in the sense that i was attempting to degrade what he is saying."


"If you want to continue the debate you now have to deal with the claims that your argument is fallacious,"

and if they ARE fallacious claims, then you really MUST address them.

"unless you and your friend both agree to ignore the arsehole who wandered into your conversation."

that's another option! but in no way did this person walking into the room ever attack the actual argument itself.



"All of this is to say, yeah I interpreted your joke as undermining Ognion's post. Most reasonable people would, it becomes really fucking evident the moment you put it in the context of a real social situation."

my god. the moment you put it in the context of a real social situation, you see that it's a mocking of Ogion's character.

and because you ALWAYS are mentioning context but NEVER actually provide it, let me give you some: Ogion and I argue white a bit on this site. my mocking him there was simply an appeal against his character, and his debating style.


"But maybe you don't understand how those work. Lord knows I don't have time to teach you basic social skills."

rule number one of social skills: time and place for everything. Ogion had just finished his little rant which was full of fallacies, and i thought it'd be fun to pick them apart and mock him for them.


"Don't expect an apology, I'm lambasting you for wandering into a social situation with the demeanour of a punch drunk ape, and an unlikeable, arrogant one at that."

once again, ad hominem that runs contrary to evidence. i've still had more +1s from that one post than ALL of yours here combined. frankly my joke was well received and witty.



but let me say this one more time, so you don't look like any more of an idiot.


when you say i'm undermining his argument:

"it is RIGHT in the sense that i was attempting to mock him and the way he argues.

it is WRONG in the sense that i was attempting to degrade what he is saying."

any alternative perception that you had of the situation, in no way reflects what i ACTUALLY said, and is entirely your own problem.

the fact that you aren't able to tell the difference between someone criticizing the content of an argument and someone criticizing the argumentative style, really has highlighted your idiocy in this entire conversation.


"1. poisoning the well
2. strawman
3. ad hominem

all in one post. @Ogion never fails to impress me"



this is ALL i posted. the fact you think this is an attack against content of an argument, and not a critique of the way the argument was structured, is entirely. hilariously. intellectually repulsive

@damian

the simple fact of the matter is that when someone uses fallacies in an argument, it is objectively better for the debate if the fallacies are called out.

saying that calling out fallacies (where there ARE actual fallacies) undermines an argument, is only true if you try to dismiss the CONTENT of what someone is saying, by the non-sequitur that there were some fallacies present.



here is the definition of the fallacy fallacy:

"You presumed that because a claim has been poorly argued, or a fallacy has been made, that the claim itself must be wrong."


WHAT PART OF THE FOLLOWING POST, SAID THAT OGION'S CALIM WAS WRONG???????

---------------------------------------------------------
"1. poisoning the well
2. strawman
3. ad hominem

all in one post. @Ogion never fails to impress me"
---------------------------------------------------------

you can say that my comedic demeanor did not help the debate:

but that is not what you originally said.


you can say that i should have been more constructive:

but that is not what you originally said.



YOU SAID:

---------------------------------------------------------
I've got one more for you too look up JamesYanik

The Fallacy Fallacy
---------------------------------------------------------

this is an attack on my character, saying that i used logical fallacies. this claim stops one step short of outright calling me a hypocrite.



THEN YOU SAID:

---------------------------------------------------------
You're suggesting that what he's saying has no merit because it uses fallacies. Or if you're not trying to suggest that you're doing a terrible job of doing so.
---------------------------------------------------------

except referring back to my original post: THERE'S NOTHING THERE TO SUGGEST THAT!

in fact there is ONLY evidence to suggest that i was mocking his illogical argumentative techniques.

YOU claimed that i was mocking the merit of his claims, but that is not the case. i was mocking the logic that he used. if you look at what i posted an MISINTERPRETED it, then it's not MY fault, if YOU read it wrong.

@teacon

1. if the mods don't police debates i'm fine with that

2. my citing +1s ONLY supported my part of the argument that said my post was well-received. that's empirical fact, not an appeal to popularity.

3. good points you made at damian. i'd like to see how he responds

Guys I'm sorry for starting such a heated debate. I thought we would all agree that not giving the mods easy excuses to silence people was a good thing, but it seems like that was not the case.

@Ezio

oh no, we derailed this thread quite a ways back when @damian impugned upon my honor by suggesting that by merely addressing the existence of fallacies in an argument was a fallacy itself. (a product of his deluded imagination that i was trying to attack Ogion's actual content of claims, which i at no point did)

@LeonWalrus - if we want to go with the famous quotes:

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."

- John Kenneth Galbraith