In God We Trust

Debate serious and interesting topics, rant about politics or pop culture, or otherwise converse in essay form about your opinions. The rules of conduct here are a little stricter.
User avatar
Demon Fisherman
Posts: 1265
Joined: 2008.09.19 (06:28)
NUMA Profile: http://nmaps.net/user/
MBTI Type: ENTP

Postby blue_tetris » 2009.08.22 (14:54)

Tsukatu wrote:"We were all just inputting anecdotal evidence from our own sourceless experiences." -blue_tetris
"I'm questioning the accuracy of Atilla's claims based on personal experience." -SlappyMcGee

And you've made me realize that I neglected to add "retroactively changing previous statements" to the list of things that need to stop.
Shit, you've caught me in a trap where I've contradicted myself. Only... like.... SlappyMcGee is not myself. In fact, last I checked, he was a second dude altogether. And while you may think it makes me a hypocrite to say one thing and then, later on, say something completely different as SlappyMcGee, I fully retain my perspective on the issue. We disagreed here.

Atilla said something that was entirely anecdotal. Slappy challenged it. I went along with it. SlappyMcGee and I are two differing persons.
Suki wrote:
blue_tetris wrote:Statistics without their sources are tantamount to anecdotes. They're stories you're using, conversationally, to add to a situation.
When the subject is on the scale of an entire culture (or amalgamation of 50 cultures, if we want to more accurately describe the US), statistics trump personal experience because the latter has zero weight regardless of whether or not it's true. At the very least, statistics have a chance of meaningfully contribute to a conversation about society (which this conversation was about), whereas personal experience cannot matter except as flavor.
When you make shit up, it doesn't matter whether it's a statistic that you made up, a story that you made up, or whatever. You made that shit up. The phrasing of your lie doesn't make it any more true. If Tsukatu is keen on believing lies when they're phrased in a way that sounds authoritative, I find that sad. That's also not the Tsukatu that I know.
Suki wrote:No, what a casual conversation does is remove from you the burden to substantiate your claims. For example:
A: "So whales sing, apparently."
B: "Actually, I don't remember where I read it, but there was this thing that said that more than something like 80% of whales sing as they travel."
C: "What? Nah, that's bullshit. I've been snorkeling once near some whales and didn't hear shit."
Even in the context of a casual conversation, Person C is being unreasonable, and it doesn't actually matter of any of those statements are true. His input should be immediately discarded, because the subject was not "have you ever heard a whale sing," and was therefore his limited personal experience was not capable of being used to contest B's statement.
Had you led with, "that's weird; I've never been persecuted for being an atheist," then fine, I'd never have said a thing. But now this has turned into some parallel universe where you and Slaps have thrown out everything you once knew about how talking works.
A lie is a lie, whether you call it a statistic or not. If you don't source your information, candy-coating it with numbers doesn't make it true. Saying that a news anchor told you that it's true doesn't make it true. Telling people you "saw it on Nova" doesn't make it true. Truth is not contained within the wording of the lie.

A: It's a fact that women are retards.
B: Not only that, but 90% of women are retards. I saw it in this documentary once. I don't remember the documentary, but it was extremely reliable and had lots of statistical sources and shit. Trust me.
C: That's bullshit. I know plenty of women and they're not retards. I don't have proof either, but I'm just adding that, in my experiences, at least 50% of women aren't retards. No hyper-liberal documentarians have made any films about the shit that I just made up, but it's significantly more reasonable.
D: Fuck you, Person C. You're out of line. I agree with Person B, plus he said the words "documentary" and "statistics", so his story is true.

Person D here is Tsukatu. Tsukatu is not the same person as SlappyMcGee.
Suki wrote:
blue_tetris wrote:When dudes are sitting around on a couch talking through their collective experience and maintaining a small debate, then some guy says that he heard something about this, then conjures a statistic, it is universally dismissed as unreliable.
First, this is your personal experience, and therefore useless in determining whether or not this is how conversations end up working.
And to illustrate my point on how personal experience is unreliable at this scope because it can vary so easily, the situation you've described has never been my personal experience. I've always seen that quoted statistics are trusted above random personal experience in casual conversation, and the people offering anecdotes add some disclaimer like, "that's strange, because I...", without attempting to invalidate the statistical claim with their anecdote.
If I pretended that I got my information about human behavior from a documentary or told you I learned it to get a Communications minor, would that render it more true? Which lie did I have to use to vindicate that what I was saying was true? Clearly I either need to use Atilla's lies, or make up shit you already agree with, so you forgo fact-checking me in a chiefly FOX News network fashion.
Suki wrote:
blue_tetris wrote:I maintain you are the PETA of atheists and fully maintain my right and ability to use hyperbole. If you had a bucket of Jewblood, you would gleefully dump it over Christian heads at a religious procession. I will continue using this degree of ridiculous hyperbole, unless you and the Christians keeping this brother-man down want to take that away from a proud Atheist-American as well.
In other words, you're proud that you're telling blatant, unashamed lies? Respect minus another fifty. Holy shit, dude.
I continue not knowing why you think this is a lie. Your inability to Google "Tsukatu" and discover this yourself is overwhelming. There is a vast wealth of information available on how Tsukatu is a ridiculously lofty-minded atheist who views himself as a perpetual underdog of the system. I'd pull up the first few Google links and put them in giant quote blocks in this post, but the irony would take up far too much space.
Suki wrote:No, it's actually like I said in my previous post (seriously, it was, like, right there, in its own paragraph and everything, as its own standalone point): it was my understanding that this was common knowledge here, since I thought it was brought up recently and sufficiently supported.
The fact is, if you believe that content is widely supported, you don't have any concern for its lack of sources. You accept information previously-regarded as true as being necessarily true. So when Atilla said "It was a show about atheists having to live in a gated community", you accepted that this was widely established fact. Like everyone knows that atheists have to live in island communities. I don't see that as fact. That's what Atilla said. Atilla did not say that "atheists are the most disparaged group" and leave it at that. He referenced (what I thought) was a ridiculous situation that is occuring in the United States, whereby atheists are systemically corralled. So I called him on that.

Had Atilla only said that atheists were more disparaged than other religious groups, I'd have taken no issue. But he provided a bizarre scenario occuring in the United States and gave no source for this ridiculous notion.

My argument was never about "Atheists aren't disparaged". My argument was that violence against atheists was not widespread. So when Tsukatu jesused himself in to put up a whole bunch of statistics largely unrelated to the specific nature of Atilla's claims, it was information that was both true, but not really beneficial to either side of the previous discussion. You spent no time verifying that Atilla's scenario involving atheist concentration camps in an unknown Aussie docudrama was even remotely true.

You changed the argument at hand into one in which you were correct.

Atilla: I am presenting sourceless info. I am an Australian. I have an experience where I watched a film that says that violence (a key word in the original discussion) against atheists is widespread in the US.
Dave: I am presenting equally sourceless info. I am an American. I have a broad number of experience where I am living as an atheist in the US, surrounded by other atheists, and have seen no violence (again, the key word; no one mentioned whether or not people "agreed with our lifestyle") against them as a result of their atheism.
Tsukatu: That's bullshit, Dave. Unlike Atilla's, your information is sourceless and I don't immediately believe it as true. Despite the evident cuteness of his unevolved form, most trainers still elected to evolve to Raichu. Check Google next time. Respect -50, :/.

So, even if you were entering into our sourceless conversation about the violence against atheists, you didn't even appropriately provide content related to that. You spammed a set of largely unrelated polls that revealed that most Americans don't understand the lifestyle of atheists. Then you changed my opinion to being that I think atheists are universally respected, so you could be corrected, and then we mostly started talking about fact-checking.

Where Atilla's sourceless citations of widespread violence against atheists was vacuously true, becuase you figured it was common knowledge that athies get beaten up for their shoes.

So when you go into this spiel:
Suki wrote:I didn't realize that some of us had suffered brain hemorrhages and selectively forgot that that was the state of US opinions on atheism today. I thought it was obvious.
It makes little sense to me. You've changed the argument, and are largely guilty of using the same hyperbole I used. The same hyperbole where I said "You know, atheists aren't hanging from street lamps in the darkened, rain-soaked cities of the Western world." to make your argument seem insane. You've changed my argument to "Atheists are the most loved and respected of social groups in the US." Mostly, because your retrograde amnesia prevented you from discerning that the original argument was about violence against atheists and their internment into camps and their systematic slaughter. Now I don't know where I'm coming from.

But the hyperbole I'm using for irony's sake is, I believe, naturally and unironically ingrained into how Tsukatu does argumentation. Like, you honestly believe I've taken the side of "Atheists are revered as new-age gods by the American public." so that you can properly debate it.
Suki wrote:Even so -- and this is a distinction I've made repeatedly now, so please, please actually listen this time -- I took issue with your reasons for dismissing those figures, namely that your personal experience conflicted with them. That was the reason you gave for disagreeing with the figure,
And I never disagreed with any figures. You really do believe that I was contesting those polls you Googled up, and not Atilla's documentary where it could be conjectured that American atheists were forced into gated communities and had violence perpetrated against them regularly.
Suki wrote:and that's the reason that Slaps explicitly gave through chokes and gasps around your e-peen in his esophagus. Your post is right fucking there. You disagreed because you thought your personal experience trumped several well-supported statistical facts that I thought were common knowledge, as did Slaps.
Before you had even entered the argument (in your own words, bro), there were no statistics out on the table. There was just Atilla's impression of the violence against American atheists and mine. Your figures resolved nothing. They were to put you on your hoity-toity dais composed of factoids, whereby you could gaze down at the masses and turn water into wine.
Suki wrote:"You bring this up constantly." "You managed to dredge up these statistics." "You're the PETA of atheists." "Atilla said that atheists are murdered in the streets and nobody cares." These are all egregious exaggerations you've made, and some of them were restated even when directly pointed out for what they were. I asked you to stop doing this. Why are you still being a bitch? The Baby Jesus is crying, and it's all your fault.
You have mentioned in the past that you're a different guy in real life. From Ventrilo to discussions on the forums, it's certainly come up. And it always puts dudes in a weird place. Like, we don't know who to talk about anymore. All the shit you gave us as information about you, as a person, is something we're not allowed to talk about anymore. And you shroud yourself in this mysterious "We don't know who you really are" bit. How do you intend we think about Tsukatu if all the information you've provided is something we're not entitled to use when coming up with how you interact with humans, generally.

I always act in the same way that I interact with real world humans. That way, when humans start discerning my true nature, I won't have to say "That's not really me. I'm a different guy in the Otherworld. Don't base any predictions you've made about me socially on the ways I behave." O_O

That makes you depersonalized at the very least and schizophrenic at the most. If this is common Internet form and I'm overemphasizing things, then I strongly believe that all of today's youth are goddamn crazy and the Internet is ruining them.
Suki wrote:Even-fucking-so, even if I brought up that distinction constantly, then I'm still completely justified in defending myself on this tangent Slaps started where we try to determine why Suki might possibly get antagonized. And it's even stranger to me when you acknowledge openly that what you know of me is purely from online interaction but still boldly claim that my offline circumstances (which you've also openly acknowledged that you invented) cause my offline problems because of the person I am offline. That's schizophrenic as hell.
You bring to the Internet a discussion about the world away from the forums. That world is still one that's largely manufactured for the Net. The Internet modus contains a collection of information about a Tsukatu that goes to supermarkets. And even though there aren't any supermarkets* on the Internet, the information you've provided about your general supermarket behavior is something we're gonna talk about. On the Internet.
Suki wrote:If someone had said this in a different thread, you'd have replied with some Dave-like embellishment of, "that's irrelevant because the fictional John McClane was not hunting the real-world Hans Gruber."
My offline behavior determines how I'm treated offline. How is this difficult to understand? If you're saying you only know the online version of me, then stop commenting on the offline version of me. If you knew this to begin with, you definitely wouldn't have gone down the ridiculous road of "your online personality determines how you're treated offline."
I think we're all entitled to using examples about the real world for behaviors we see. We can't constantly use examples from the Internet world. I don't know shit enough about the depths of the Internet world to view behaviors in a purely Internet fashion. And, like, if you're to the point in your life where your Internet behaviors cannot possibly be identified or extrapolated by humans in the real world who base their opinions on real world interactions, it's time to unplug your 4chans and log off of your CPUs.
Image
The Real N Sex on the Xerox Space Pimp Online Super Fluffy Pack 1! Super Fluffy Pack 2! Super Crunchy Pack! Mother Thumping Impossible: 2005 MotY! Time is on My Side: 2006 PMotY! Survival map king! Best humor award! Best satire award! Best voice award! Inadvertently intimidating! Assholier than thou! Gdubs is totally back! WIS 14! Cyberzone creator! Clique creator! Most lines on IRC! Ventrilo moderator and regular! Certified Dungeon Master! Most modest person ever! ENTP! Incorrigible alcoholic! CHA 19! AMERICAN! Least pretentious! Elitist extraordinaire! Liberal libertarian! Incapable of experiencing love! Check Safe! Commodore of the Eldritch Seas! Archmagus of the Eleventh Hall! Sheriff of the Uncharted West! Godfather of the IRC Mafia! Pun enthusiast! Quadster! Challenging Dunbar's number! Wikipedian!Approves of 4th Edition! 1,000 Blank White Cards! radio_free_tetris! Migratory! INT 18! Doesn't know when he's being genuine, therefore cannot form lasting relationships with people! Really into black chicks! Even more into Indian chicks and Blasians! Hates moderators! Loves the C word! Tronster! Thinks we should play more Worms! Always wins iSketch! Owns a Wii! Plays as Pikachu in Smash Bros! Wrote literotica! Wrote anime fanfic! Sorta into Asians! Lived and loved the 80's and 90's! Chattiest sig! Cyberzone ][ creator! Operand of the Greater Space Pimp Continuum! Helped lead the forum move!Wizard Date! Participated in the blue_tetris takeover! Pithiest one-liners! Walkin' on, walkin' on broken glass! Seems to have an invisible touch! Economist! Mario hackster! Owner of the most complex D&D campaign setting! Micromanagerial! FREEDOM is all-American! Slowly distancing! Supports the Democrats! Supports the old GOP! CATO Institute fanboy! Penn and Teller fan! Large, in charge, and on a barge! Heralded by community as genius hero! Proud yet humble recipient of the Mare & Raigan Award for 2008! CON 9! Dave of Nazareth! Communist is annoyed with me! Not half bad at images! F.Y.I. I am a medic! It's a spook house, lame ball. Too bad! Space Pimp II: Rags 2 Bitches! F.Y.I. I am a spy! Entire team is babbies! STR 10! Sorta appreciating scythe and atob again, for new reasons! Played CS:S briefly! Welcome to Nebraska! Do you think you can Live! Heist! Portrayer of the mighty 88 Shells! Joyous proprietor of the future estate of Kablizzy and blue_tetris! It's Batmen all the way up! They brought crystals to a sceince fight; that's a good way to lose your cat! Even SlappyMcGee! I'm about to run out of either primates or sexually transmitted diseases! One-upper! Toaster oven clairvoyant Mythomaniac! That's the Magic of Macy's! Half of Half! Spend all my time making love, all my love making time!

Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir
Posts: 1561
Joined: 2008.09.26 (12:33)
NUMA Profile: http://nmaps.net/user/incluye
MBTI Type: ENTP
Location: USofA
Contact:

Postby otters » 2009.08.22 (15:27)

What exactly is it you two are arguing about now?
Image

User avatar
Demon Fisherman
Posts: 1265
Joined: 2008.09.19 (06:28)
NUMA Profile: http://nmaps.net/user/
MBTI Type: ENTP

Postby blue_tetris » 2009.08.22 (15:31)

Wight wrote:What exactly is it you two are arguing about now?
stfu and get out
Image
The Real N Sex on the Xerox Space Pimp Online Super Fluffy Pack 1! Super Fluffy Pack 2! Super Crunchy Pack! Mother Thumping Impossible: 2005 MotY! Time is on My Side: 2006 PMotY! Survival map king! Best humor award! Best satire award! Best voice award! Inadvertently intimidating! Assholier than thou! Gdubs is totally back! WIS 14! Cyberzone creator! Clique creator! Most lines on IRC! Ventrilo moderator and regular! Certified Dungeon Master! Most modest person ever! ENTP! Incorrigible alcoholic! CHA 19! AMERICAN! Least pretentious! Elitist extraordinaire! Liberal libertarian! Incapable of experiencing love! Check Safe! Commodore of the Eldritch Seas! Archmagus of the Eleventh Hall! Sheriff of the Uncharted West! Godfather of the IRC Mafia! Pun enthusiast! Quadster! Challenging Dunbar's number! Wikipedian!Approves of 4th Edition! 1,000 Blank White Cards! radio_free_tetris! Migratory! INT 18! Doesn't know when he's being genuine, therefore cannot form lasting relationships with people! Really into black chicks! Even more into Indian chicks and Blasians! Hates moderators! Loves the C word! Tronster! Thinks we should play more Worms! Always wins iSketch! Owns a Wii! Plays as Pikachu in Smash Bros! Wrote literotica! Wrote anime fanfic! Sorta into Asians! Lived and loved the 80's and 90's! Chattiest sig! Cyberzone ][ creator! Operand of the Greater Space Pimp Continuum! Helped lead the forum move!Wizard Date! Participated in the blue_tetris takeover! Pithiest one-liners! Walkin' on, walkin' on broken glass! Seems to have an invisible touch! Economist! Mario hackster! Owner of the most complex D&D campaign setting! Micromanagerial! FREEDOM is all-American! Slowly distancing! Supports the Democrats! Supports the old GOP! CATO Institute fanboy! Penn and Teller fan! Large, in charge, and on a barge! Heralded by community as genius hero! Proud yet humble recipient of the Mare & Raigan Award for 2008! CON 9! Dave of Nazareth! Communist is annoyed with me! Not half bad at images! F.Y.I. I am a medic! It's a spook house, lame ball. Too bad! Space Pimp II: Rags 2 Bitches! F.Y.I. I am a spy! Entire team is babbies! STR 10! Sorta appreciating scythe and atob again, for new reasons! Played CS:S briefly! Welcome to Nebraska! Do you think you can Live! Heist! Portrayer of the mighty 88 Shells! Joyous proprietor of the future estate of Kablizzy and blue_tetris! It's Batmen all the way up! They brought crystals to a sceince fight; that's a good way to lose your cat! Even SlappyMcGee! I'm about to run out of either primates or sexually transmitted diseases! One-upper! Toaster oven clairvoyant Mythomaniac! That's the Magic of Macy's! Half of Half! Spend all my time making love, all my love making time!

Yes sir, no sir, three bags full sir
Posts: 1561
Joined: 2008.09.26 (12:33)
NUMA Profile: http://nmaps.net/user/incluye
MBTI Type: ENTP
Location: USofA
Contact:

Postby otters » 2009.08.22 (15:40)

blue_tetris wrote:
Wight wrote:What exactly is it you two are arguing about now?
stfu and get out
How do you come up with these comebacks? I wish I had skills like that.
Image

"Asked ortsz for a name change"
Posts: 3380
Joined: 2008.11.13 (16:47)

Postby otters~1 » 2009.08.23 (04:33)

Tsukatu wrote:This has officially become depressing.
Demonz, can we have a lock?
the dusk the dawn the earth the sea

User avatar
Queen of All Spiders
Posts: 4263
Joined: 2008.09.29 (03:54)
NUMA Profile: http://www.freeWoWgold.edu
MBTI Type: ENFP
Location: Quebec, Canada!

Postby SlappyMcGee » 2009.08.23 (05:01)

flagmyidol wrote:
Tsukatu wrote:This has officially become depressing.
Demonz, can we have a lock?

Errm. Why? This is an interesting debate. Between two admins. Where Demonz has no say. :/
Loathes

User avatar
Retrofuturist
Posts: 3131
Joined: 2008.09.19 (06:55)
MBTI Type: ENTP
Location: California, USA
Contact:

Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2009.08.23 (07:20)

Slaps:
What does our rank have to do with it? We're disagreeing on something irrelevant to forum administration; I wouldn't be arguing any differently if I and/or Dave weren't admins.


Dave:
I don't think we're understanding each other.
blue_tetris wrote:
Tsukatu wrote:"We were all just inputting anecdotal evidence from our own sourceless experiences." -blue_tetris
"I'm questioning the accuracy of Atilla's claims based on personal experience." -SlappyMcGee

And you've made me realize that I neglected to add "retroactively changing previous statements" to the list of things that need to stop.
Shit, you've caught me in a trap where I've contradicted myself. Only... like.... SlappyMcGee is not myself. In fact, last I checked, he was a second dude altogether. And while you may think it makes me a hypocrite to say one thing and then, later on, say something completely different as SlappyMcGee, I fully retain my perspective on the issue. We disagreed here.
I didn't intend to point out a contradiction between the two quotes. It was between the quoted section and the two quotes I replied with.
You said, "It's weird to rail against the offering of an anecdote (not anecdotal evidence)" (emphasis yours), suggesting that you didn't think you were offering anecdotal evidence. Then I followed that up with you explicitly saying that you were offering anecdotal evidence ("We were all just inputting anecdotal evidence").
In short, you said "we weren't giving anecdotal evidence" ("we" referring to you and Slappy), which was wrong, since you said before that, "we were giving anecdotal evidence."
That was the contradiction, and it's plain as day. I'm not mixing you up with Slappy.
Lemme spell it out even more explicitly:
1. You and Slappy were not giving anecdotal evidence.
2. You were giving anecdotal evidence.
3. Slappy was giving anecdotal evidence.
blue_tetris wrote:Atilla said something that was entirely anecdotal. Slappy challenged it. I went along with it.
Tsukatu wrote:pointing out that, technically, hearsay of compiled statistics counts as anecdotal evidence is such a trivial and empty point that I'm not going to dignify it with a response.
blue_tetris wrote:When you make shit up, it doesn't matter whether it's a statistic that you made up, a story that you made up, or whatever. You made that shit up. The phrasing of your lie doesn't make it any more true. If Tsukatu is keen on believing lies when they're phrased in a way that sounds authoritative, I find that sad. That's also not the Tsukatu that I know.
That only applies to the special case where you know shit is being made up. If it was obvious that Atilla was making shit up (and it turns out he wasn't), then we wouldn't be having this conversation.
Rather than try to explain it verbally yet again, please consult this handy diagram:
Image

As you can see, anecdotal evidence never helps the pursuit of truth in conversations on a scope larger than personal experience (which this is). When Atilla gave that information, a thinking person's mind would go to "that might be valid information, if it's true" (which in Atilla's case, it was), and might then ask, "what are your sources?" A thinking person would not, however, launch into a proof-by-example using anecdotal evidence. It's simply not possible, on principle, for that to be a workable attempt to make your point.
So when Atilla cited that statistic, you were free to challenge that figure because it was not qualified with a citation, or to challenge it based on some other (real or imaginary) survey you vaguely remember seeing this one time, or even to say you're not convinced because you don't trust that that study happened or had those results. If it turned out to be unsubstantiated, then kudos to you. The fact that it ended up being a trustable statistic should've demonstrated that it's important not to discard it before investigating it. But challenging it based on personal experience was ridiculous. That was the reason I spoke up in the first place, and that's what, as I understand it, this conversation is about (although I admit I'm curious now to see how much it takes for you to ever admit to error).
blue_tetris wrote:A lie is a lie, whether you call it a statistic or not. If you don't source your information, candy-coating it with numbers doesn't make it true. Saying that a news anchor told you that it's true doesn't make it true. Telling people you "saw it on Nova" doesn't make it true. Truth is not contained within the wording of the lie.

A: It's a fact that women are retards.
B: Not only that, but 90% of women are retards. I saw it in this documentary once. I don't remember the documentary, but it was extremely reliable and had lots of statistical sources and shit. Trust me.
C: That's bullshit. I know plenty of women and they're not retards. I don't have proof either, but I'm just adding that, in my experiences, at least 50% of women aren't retards. No hyper-liberal documentarians have made any films about the shit that I just made up, but it's significantly more reasonable.
D: Fuck you, Person C. You're out of line. I agree with Person B, plus he said the words "documentary" and "statistics", so his story is true.

Person D here is Tsukatu. Tsukatu is not the same person as SlappyMcGee.

...

If I pretended that I got my information about human behavior from a documentary or told you I learned it to get a Communications minor, would that render it more true? Which lie did I have to use to vindicate that what I was saying was true? Clearly I either need to use Atilla's lies, or make up shit you already agree with, so you forgo fact-checking me in a chiefly FOX News network fashion.
Of course. You'd have a point if my reason for believing Atilla was his wording, or me confusing my hopes and wishes with reality, instead of prior knowledge (like I said in my first response to you) that the numbers he was giving were substantiated. I've never suggested that something might be true if it's worded correctly; you're putting words in my mouth.
If I lie about a statistic, it will be found out when I'm asked for my sources and discarded. But in a case like this, when the statistic is true, then obviously it's meaningful. And I'm still confounded that you're continuing to argue that cited statistics are no more reliable than anecdotes, despite the fact that the former (A) can be verified and (B) is capable of ever mattering. In this case especially, Atilla was citing a survey, not wrapping up his opinion in some lie of a qualifier to make it seem more trustworthy. Even if he was, he would've been found out as soon as someone remembered how Google works. The presentation of the figure was unimportant; he could've even given it as his opinion, and it would've ended up being revealed as a trustworthy statistic. But you and Slaps explicitly gave anecdotes, and couldn't have been anything other than anecdotes. You used them to contest the truth of the matter, and this confused me because anecdotes never matter.

Besides which, Person C in your example is still being unreasonable because he's throwing in anecdotal evidence to contest something outside the scope of personal interaction. I'll even be consistent with how you portrayed my attitude with this revision:
D: Fuck you, Person C. You're out of line. Person B, do you remember what the documentary was called? I need to see this thing.
...except in this case, like I said, I already knew the sources Atilla was talking about, which in your little script would amount to:
D: Fuck you, Person C. You're out of line. Persob B, I saw that same documentary, and it was totally right. You want to go out back and bone?
In any case, this would serve as a better example if you kept it faithful to the situation in this thread, which was the fact that the proposed statistic was actually right.
blue_tetris wrote:The fact is, if you believe that content is widely supported, you don't have any concern for its lack of sources. You accept information previously-regarded as true as being necessarily true. So when Atilla said "It was a show about atheists having to live in a gated community", you accepted that this was widely established fact. Like everyone knows that atheists have to live in island communities. I don't see that as fact. That's what Atilla said. Atilla did not say that "atheists are the most disparaged group" and leave it at that. He referenced (what I thought) was a ridiculous situation that is occuring in the United States, whereby atheists are systemically corralled. So I called him on that.
Good! Fine! Fantastic! I totally encourage you to contest what seems unreasonable to you.
Where we're drifting is that I think you should do this by contesting whether or not they're qualified to make that statement, rather than trying to make a counter-point with a proof by example. I was obviously wrong to think that Atilla's citations were common knowledge, but it should still explain to you why I didn't demand his sources -- I have no need to ask for information I already have. His wording was not the reason I agreed, nor was it the fact that it is consistent with my view of society, but because I already knew how it was substantiated. You, since you did not know this, should've contested it by asking for the source instead of assuming there wasn't one and trying to establish a point by a means that's incapable of establishing a point.
blue_tetris wrote:My argument was never about "Atheists aren't disparaged". My argument was that violence against atheists was not widespread. So when Tsukatu jesused himself in to put up a whole bunch of statistics largely unrelated to the specific nature of Atilla's claims, it was information that was both true, but not really beneficial to either side of the previous discussion. You spent no time verifying that Atilla's scenario involving atheist concentration camps in an unknown Aussie docudrama was even remotely true.
Seriously? This is what you're hitting me with?
I haven't backed up the other portion of Atilla's post because it was an anecdote, and anecdotes never matter. I don't even think he was trying to prove a point with it, though, whereas you've stated that you were (and then that you weren't, but that was just your attempt to rewrite history), so it doesn't matter to me.
There is a difference between citing a statistic and following it with an anecdote, and trying to make a point by use of an anecdote.
Atilla said: "According to surveys, atheists are the most distrusted minority. Also, I know an atheist who is distrusted."
I would be ranting against Atilla if he had said: "I know an atheist who is distrusted, therefore atheists are the most distrusted minority."
Atilla did the former, tossing in the anecdote as flavor, and I don't think I did anything wrong by ignoring the flavor. You and Slaps were doing the latter, so I'm railing against the two of you.
blue_tetris wrote:So, even if you were entering into our sourceless conversation about the violence against atheists, you didn't even appropriately provide content related to that. You spammed a set of largely unrelated polls that revealed that most Americans don't understand the lifestyle of atheists. Then you changed my opinion to being that I think atheists are universally respected, so you could be corrected, and then we mostly started talking about fact-checking.
Okay, this is just laughable. I gave quoted exactly the sources Atilla was referring to with exactly the figures Atilla gave. Your guess that the cause of what the statistics reported might be a misunderstanding of lifestyles, but my statistic dump was a full qualification of the statistics you felt needed qualifying. They were obviously related directly to the topic of conversation. If you decided to start thinking differently about where the thread was going, that sounds like a personal problem, but I was on-topic when I posted those statistics.
Otherwise, you are partially right: I introduced a new subject of conversation into this thread when I said you were unreasonable for contesting statistics with a personal anecdote. But I still can't see how you can say that that wasn't relevant to the trustworthiness of Atilla's reporting: Atilla gave some figures, you contested it, and I objected to the grounds on which you contested them. We're still on the same discussion, except that as far as I understand it, you've stopped dogging Atilla for misrepresenting American society because his position turned out to be fully substantiated; you were wrong. We've now sidetracked to whether or not you remember how to argue without having to resort to underhanded tricks like rewriting history, exaggerations that are particularly misrepresentative, and outright slander, but I still completely disagree that I was deviating from the topic when I dumped the statistics.
blue_tetris wrote:So when you go into this spiel:
Suki wrote:I didn't realize that some of us had suffered brain hemorrhages and selectively forgot that that was the state of US opinions on atheism today. I thought it was obvious.
It makes little sense to me. You've changed the argument, and are largely guilty of using the same hyperbole I used.
...
You've changed my argument to "Atheists are the most loved and respected of social groups in the US."
Ha! What? Are you serious? That was my explanation for why I agreed with Atilla, and that's as far as that ever went. And I've long ago ceded that I was too optimistic about how well known something was that ended up being, as I demonstrated, exactly the way I thought it was. And my position has never wavered from "you were wrong to offer anecdotal evidence to contest Atilla's statement." That was the focus of my objection from the start, and it has been ever since.
blue_tetris wrote:Mostly, because your retrograde amnesia prevented you from discerning that the original argument was about violence against atheists and their internment into camps and their systematic slaughter.
I am so confident that this thread was never about that that I'm going to give you a chance to sucker-punch me. Find a quote, any quote, in this thread that suggests that this was ever the subject of this thread.
blue_tetris wrote:Like, you honestly believe I've taken the side of "Atheists are revered as new-age gods by the American public." so that you can properly debate it.
You've said this more than once, but I'm only going to quote it once because I only have one thing to say to it:
This is patently untrue. I know for a damned fact that none of what I've said to you assumes this position, since I never argue against it and have never had a mindset where that was even relevant. All I've objected to here was that you're not disagreeing correctly: You thought that Atilla's statement was unsubstantiated, so I showed that it was substantiated. I didn't quote all those sources to prove to you that atheists are mistrusted, but to prove to you that the statement was substantiated. That's all. If I thought for a moment that you believed atheists were beloved by the proles, I wouldn't have made towerpost after towerpost pointing out specifically that I disagree with the way you disagreed. That wouldn't be relevant.
blue_tetris wrote:
Suki wrote:Even so -- and this is a distinction I've made repeatedly now, so please, please actually listen this time -- I took issue with your reasons for dismissing those figures, namely that your personal experience conflicted with them. That was the reason you gave for disagreeing with the figure,
And I never disagreed with any figures. You really do believe that I was contesting those polls you Googled up, and not Atilla's documentary where it could be conjectured that American atheists were forced into gated communities and had violence perpetrated against them regularly.
Wh--
Am I reading this right?
Did you seriously just quote me telling you that I disagree with your reason for dismissing what Atilla said, and extrapolate from it that I take issue with something besides your reasons for not trusting Atilla? Did that seriously just happen?
I am, actually, under the impression that you are convinced by the figures now that they've been fully sourced. It is not at all a part of my mindset that you disagree with the sourced numbers, because I've only talked about your original disagreement with Atilla's reporting of those figures before they were substantiated to you. You were in the right to challenge unsourced figures, but wrong to do so in the way you did. That's what I objected to, and that remains what I'm objecting to, and clearly you have some understanding of this since you keep talking about how anecdotes are on the same level as statistics.
blue_tetris wrote:
Suki wrote:
blue_tetris wrote:I maintain you are the PETA of atheists and fully maintain my right and ability to use hyperbole. If you had a bucket of Jewblood, you would gleefully dump it over Christian heads at a religious procession. I will continue using this degree of ridiculous hyperbole, unless you and the Christians keeping this brother-man down want to take that away from a proud Atheist-American as well.
In other words, you're proud that you're telling blatant, unashamed lies? Respect minus another fifty. Holy shit, dude.
I continue not knowing why you think this is a lie. Your inability to Google "Tsukatu" and discover this yourself is overwhelming. There is a vast wealth of information available on how Tsukatu is a ridiculously lofty-minded atheist who views himself as a perpetual underdog of the system. I'd pull up the first few Google links and put them in giant quote blocks in this post, but the irony would take up far too much space.
Okay, dude, try to focus here: I am nice in person. The fact that you do not see me be nice on the intertubes is, as you have yourself stated, zero comment whatsoever about how I am in person. You have just finished saying, in that deepest level of quotes above, that you will continue to project my online persona to my offline persona despite this, even with the recognition that what you're saying is "ridiculous hyperbole." How is this not you admitting to being untruthful?
Following it up with "Googling 'Tsukatu' makes it obvious that you're an asshole" is completely fucking irrelevant because I obviously don't go by "Tsukatu" in person. I can't imagine why you would think that would be a valid point, at all. This entire tangent came from how I'm treated offline, in person, and you keep trying to argue by pulling in what you've already stated directly was information you not only couldn't possibly know, but information you've proudly declared you're going to invent, and that you'd specifically make it "ridiculous hyperbole."
Do you seriously see nothing wrong with your position here?
blue_tetris wrote:You have mentioned in the past that you're a different guy in real life. From Ventrilo to discussions on the forums, it's certainly come up. And it always puts dudes in a weird place. Like, we don't know who to talk about anymore. All the shit you gave us as information about you, as a person, is something we're not allowed to talk about anymore. And you shroud yourself in this mysterious "We don't know who you really are" bit. How do you intend we think about Tsukatu if all the information you've provided is something we're not entitled to use when coming up with how you interact with humans, generally.
"Heh, nah, I'm nicer in person." To my knowledge, this is the only distinction I've ever drawn between my offline self and online self. "You shroud yourself in mystery," "we don't know who you are," "we don't know who to talk about anymore," and the especially ridiculous, "it's something we're not allowed to talk about anymore," are such over-the-top exaggerations that it's actually pretty comical. Do you think I'm under some impression that I'm living a double life or something? From "nah, I'm nicer in person?"
With your record of blowing everything I say out of proportion, I imagine you'd accuse me of thinking I'm a double agent if I casually mentioned that sometimes I prefer chocolate even though people know that I like vanilla. "You go so far out of your way to prove to everyone that you love vanilla until they're convinced, but then you talk in such spiteful tones when you describe all the times you secretly wanted chocolate but couldn't get it because it'd blow this identity you've built up around yourself. We're scared to confront you now with which one you actually want, Suki. It's become such an awkward time every time we get to the ice cream shop because we want to tell you that we're okay with any flavor you want, but it's almost become taboo to wrest you from the trauma you visibly have when staring at the ice cream containers. It's like you hate us for something you're choosing to do, and that just makes it more uncomfortable."
To wit, I suppose that explains why we've even gotten this far in talking about the fact that I'm nice in person, because you place such overblown amounts of emphasis on it. I mean, this whole tangent started with Slaps suggesting (honestly, actually, which I appreciate) that I might have more trouble with persecution for my atheism because I'm vocal about it, and I said, "I'm not vocal about it." Then you come in out of the fucking blue with, "WE DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE ANYMORE, SUKI T_T" and ramble for fucking paragraphs about it. I've tried in vain to settle what I see is a trivial misunderstanding, but then again I think most of this conversation was centered on a trivial point until you spontaneously exploded with all the tricks in Dave's Book of Arguing Like An Asshat.
But seriously, "nah, I'm nicer in person." And this is how far it's come. Thanks for that.


Like, look, dude... Atilla said some shit and was wrong not to back it up. I agree that it was a good idea to challenge it. But not in the way you did. That's all this is about. That's all.
[spoiler="you know i always joked that it would be scary as hell to run into DMX in a dark ally, but secretly when i say 'DMX' i really mean 'Tsukatu'." -kai]"... and when i say 'scary as hell' i really mean 'tight pink shirt'." -kai[/spoiler][/i]
spoiler

Image


User avatar
Global Mod
Global Mod
Posts: 1416
Joined: 2008.09.26 (05:35)
NUMA Profile: http://nmaps.net/user/scythe33
MBTI Type: ENTP
Location: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0

Postby scythe » 2009.08.23 (08:21)

SlappyMcGee wrote:
flagmyidol wrote:
Tsukatu wrote:This has officially become depressing.
Demonz, can we have a lock?

Errm. Why? This is an interesting debate. Between two admins. Where Demonz has no say. :/
I must say, it's the best exchange I've read on this forum since its inception.
As soon as we wish to be happier, we are no longer happy.

User avatar
The Konami Number
Posts: 586
Joined: 2008.09.19 (12:27)
NUMA Profile: http://nmaps.net/user/Atilla

Postby Atilla » 2009.08.23 (09:01)

Just for future reference (ahaha), are you guys okay with Harvard-style citations for all my conversations? Or do you prefer AMA?

User avatar
Queen of All Spiders
Posts: 4263
Joined: 2008.09.29 (03:54)
NUMA Profile: http://www.freeWoWgold.edu
MBTI Type: ENFP
Location: Quebec, Canada!

Postby SlappyMcGee » 2009.08.23 (14:54)

Tsukatu wrote:Slaps:
What does our rank have to do with it? We're disagreeing on something irrelevant to forum administration; I wouldn't be arguing any differently if I and/or Dave weren't admins.

Just that if -you- wanted to lock the topic, or if Dave wanted to unlock the topic and keep the conversation going, you easily could do so yourselves, so it's rather inappropriate for flagmyidol, who is largely uninvolved here, to request a lock, especially on your behalf.

EDIT: And now that I've read the whole of your post, I'll respond, accordingly. I don't think that you are viewing what (I won't speak for Dave, here. :)) I was saying. I did not intend to show proof or evidence against Atilla's statistics. I was merely expressing my skepticism. I apologize if I misspoke and claimed to have been using "anecdotal evidence" or whatever other buzzwords you want to use, but I continue to be skeptical of those statistics. Not only for their accuracy, but for their relevance to the conversation. What I originally tried to argue was the idea that atheists are not particularly oppressed. The reason I'm making this argument is because of personal experience; I am atheist and do not have any problem expressing it, and nobody has ever given me any indication they looked down on that ideal. Certainly, nobody has ever oppressed me. I REALIZE THIS IS NOT PROOF THAT PEOPLE DO NOT GET OPPRESSED. But I think that what you have tried to demonstrate with your statistics is that some 30% of the American population actively seeks to oppress atheists? Because your comment, about how you get attacked and your car gets keyed, would seem that you wanted to make a correlation between the number who don't agree with atheist values and would not elect them to people who would be willing to indulge in physical violence.

See, had you acknowledged that the people who have attacked you have been fucking lunatics and not representative of the bunch, that would be fine. I'm not sure you believe that their are exceptions; it seemed to me that you were demonstrating that the same people who wouldn't vote for an atheist would also kick his ass, which is frankly false. None of the numbers you've said have indicated to me that atheists are largely oppressed in America, but rather that people disagree with their core values. It is racist to dislike somebody for the color of their skin; it is not racist to not want them to lead your country because you think that they are evil. Whether or not -you- largely believe that Atheism is correct and a great idea, Christians still think that you are non-believers, and they would not want somebody they are certain is going to Hell to run their country.

Lastly, I personally just find it extremely unlikely that I've never run into the 30% of Americans who hate Atheists in all of my being an open Atheist. There are hundreds of people who know that I'm an atheist, and nobody has ever -ever- expressed even the slightest grievance with me. These are the reasons I am skeptical of his statistics. I have not presented any -evidence- here, but many trials and debates do not have any evidence. They have conjecture and thoughts and ideas and our ideas are not made more invalid because you can google some irrelevant stats.
Loathes

User avatar
Demon Fisherman
Posts: 1265
Joined: 2008.09.19 (06:28)
NUMA Profile: http://nmaps.net/user/
MBTI Type: ENTP

Postby blue_tetris » 2009.08.23 (15:54)

Tsukatu wrote:
blue_tetris wrote:When you make shit up, it doesn't matter whether it's a statistic that you made up, a story that you made up, or whatever. You made that shit up. The phrasing of your lie doesn't make it any more true. If Tsukatu is keen on believing lies when they're phrased in a way that sounds authoritative, I find that sad. That's also not the Tsukatu that I know.
That only applies to the special case where you know shit is being made up. If it was obvious that Atilla was making shit up (and it turns out he wasn't), then we wouldn't be having this conversation.
And I would contend that, even if it's not obvious to you that content is a lie, you should probably check up on it at least as much as you investigate information that you find to be inconsistent with what you already believe. It's evident to you that the shit most Christians say is made up, so you fact-check. Moreover, this wasn't the issue. The big issue was that you presumed I disagreed with figures when I disagreed with a ridiculous anecdote to the tune of supplying my own contentless ramblings.
Suki wrote:So when Atilla cited that statistic, you were free to challenge that figure because it was not qualified with a citation, or to challenge it based on some other (real or imaginary) survey you vaguely remember seeing this one time, or even to say you're not convinced because you don't trust that that study happened or had those results. If it turned out to be unsubstantiated, then kudos to you. The fact that it ended up being a trustable statistic should've demonstrated that it's important not to discard it before investigating it. But challenging it based on personal experience was ridiculous. That was the reason I spoke up in the first place, and that's what, as I understand it, this conversation is about (although I admit I'm curious now to see how much it takes for you to ever admit to error).
I've never once admitted to an sort of error, even typographical or otherwise dexterity-related.

I did challenge it on the basis of an (imaginary) survey I remembered. That survey wasn't conducted by USA Today or by New York Times, but that certainly doesn't alter the veracity of it. I continue not to understand the difference between information that is or is not suitable to a debate, based on its content, rather than its source. Two chunks of sourceless information don't need to be accused of inaccuracy, where the burden of proof is solidly laid down. There's something to be said of raw rhetoric, where, in simple discourse, someone says something sourcless and you respond in an equally sourceless and uncheckable way. Those two things, I agree, are meaningless to some kind of overtly formal system of debate.

But we weren't having that. I'm much quicker to continue the current line of conversation than undermine it and call for fact-checks on everyone, in a John Stewartian fashion, derailing the entire interview as no one is capable of manufacturing said facts. I was entertaining a dialogue about violence against atheists.

Also, in my first post, I admit I made the error of confusing iangb with Atilla, and will continue to make that error. The error of confusing one person for another based on their secret sexual relationships is something not confined to myself.
Suki wrote:
blue_tetris wrote:A lie is a lie, whether you call it a statistic or not. If you don't source your information, candy-coating it with numbers doesn't make it true. Saying that a news anchor told you that it's true doesn't make it true. Telling people you "saw it on Nova" doesn't make it true. Truth is not contained within the wording of the lie.

A: It's a fact that women are retards.
B: Not only that, but 90% of women are retards. I saw it in this documentary once. I don't remember the documentary, but it was extremely reliable and had lots of statistical sources and shit. Trust me.
C: That's bullshit. I know plenty of women and they're not retards. I don't have proof either, but I'm just adding that, in my experiences, at least 50% of women aren't retards. No hyper-liberal documentarians have made any films about the shit that I just made up, but it's significantly more reasonable.
D: Fuck you, Person C. You're out of line. I agree with Person B, plus he said the words "documentary" and "statistics", so his story is true.

Person D here is Tsukatu. Tsukatu is not the same person as SlappyMcGee.

...

If I pretended that I got my information about human behavior from a documentary or told you I learned it to get a Communications minor, would that render it more true? Which lie did I have to use to vindicate that what I was saying was true? Clearly I either need to use Atilla's lies, or make up shit you already agree with, so you forgo fact-checking me in a chiefly FOX News network fashion.
Of course. You'd have a point if my reason for believing Atilla was his wording, or me confusing my hopes and wishes with reality, instead of prior knowledge (like I said in my first response to you) that the numbers he was giving were substantiated. I've never suggested that something might be true if it's worded correctly; you're putting words in my mouth.
Yes. In fact, that's what the whole "faux dialogue" scheme is for. I learned this trick from a dude I used to know. Gandalf, on the relig forums.
Suki wrote:If I lie about a statistic, it will be found out when I'm asked for my sources and discarded. But in a case like this, when the statistic is true, then obviously it's meaningful.
The same process could be attributed to an anecdote. Someone provides a personal story, you demand sources, and when none can be harnassed, you presume that it's non-meaningful to your hoity-toity debate. I don't see why information has a different epistemology when it's made out of numbers and produced by USA Today. It's certainly easier to verify information when its source is widely available. But it's the same process.

So, when I'm met with information that lacks a verifiable source, I may not always demand one. The same reason you don't say "prove it" every time anecdotes enter a conversation. To me, the burden to substantiate your claim was right there when you said it. And when you didn't substantiate your initial claim (whether it was composed of numbers or not), no one should be obliged to hold your hand through the process. I didn't care that Atilla's claim wasn't substantiated. I wasn't in the demanding of hard proof. I was offering a second opinion that contained as much proof as the one previously provided.

If my post didn't have enough citation to it, Atilla (and, by extension, iangb) was entitled to call me on it. Or we could have continued down the road we were already on. It didn't matter to me. It matter to you, babe.
Suki wrote:And I'm still confounded that you're continuing to argue that cited statistics are no more reliable than anecdotes, despite the fact that the former (A) can be verified and (B) is capable of ever mattering.
As mentioned above, I find knowledge to be sorta universal, whether it's made up of numbers and USA Todays or empirical evidence. If there's no proof provided, whether or not it's provable, it's still not true. It's still meaningless.
Suki wrote:D: Fuck you, Person C. You're out of line. Person B, do you remember what the documentary was called? I need to see this thing.
...except in this case, like I said, I already knew the sources Atilla was talking about, which in your little script would amount to:
D: Fuck you, Person C. You're out of line. Persob B, I saw that same documentary, and it was totally right. You want to go out back and bone?
In any case, this would serve as a better example if you kept it faithful to the situation in this thread, which was the fact that the proposed statistic was actually right.
Well, my proposed anecdote was also actually right. But you're never gonna know that. The fact that Atilla's figures were later found correct doesn't alter the vein of conversing that we were on. If you drove your car off of a cliff and luckily landed onto a pile of soft miniature marshmallows (the colored ones that are used for baking rather than the camping-style ones), you'd count yourself a success. But the process of driving your car off of things wouldn't be vindicated. So when Atilla drove his proverbial car off the cliff of established fact, I did so as well. And he landed on circus peanuts and we haven't found out where I've landed yet. But just because he's landed somewhere delicious and intestine-dying, his process of driving off of cliffs is no better than mine.

We've both ventured into a conversation in the same fashion--providing information (whether it's chock full of nougaty arithmetic values or filled with the marschino cherries of a good story) that has no proof.

Lemme get something to eat.




Suki wrote:Otherwise, you are partially right: I introduced a new subject of conversation into this thread when I said you were unreasonable for contesting statistics with a personal anecdote. But I still can't see how you can say that that wasn't relevant to the trustworthiness of Atilla's reporting: Atilla gave some figures, you contested it, and I objected to the grounds on which you contested them.
I didn't contest the figures. I didn't demand a better source for the figures. It wasn't my obligation. Atilla was burdened with the task of providing information where it is needed. But I was cool that he didn't! It wasn't a big deal! Instead, because the figures weren't established, I created a counterpoint.
Suki wrote:We're still on the same discussion, except that as far as I understand it, you've stopped dogging Atilla for misrepresenting American society because his position turned out to be fully substantiated; you were wrong.
This would be the case, if I could be wrong. In actuality, his overarching Aussie views as to how American Atheists are nailed to crosses and lit aflame on the yards of their kin has not yet been established. And, like, the car-over-the-cliff metaphor. Doesn't matter if the landing was graceful, he drove off a lofty cliff. I steered off the same gorgeous cliff right be-goddamn-side Atilla, all Thelma and Louise, and then Tsukatu came in and stopped us halfway during the fall to tell us where we'd land. Which totally removes all possible meaning from the denoument of the film.
Suki wrote:Ha! What? Are you serious? That was my explanation for why I agreed with Atilla, and that's as far as that ever went. And I've long ago ceded that I was too optimistic about how well known something was that ended up being, as I demonstrated, exactly the way I thought it was. And my position has never wavered from "you were wrong to offer anecdotal evidence to contest Atilla's statement." That was the focus of my objection from the start, and it has been ever since.
I offered information with no more proof than Atilla's and I will continue to match the gravity of a conversation in my own tone. That's how I became so overwhelmingly charismatic. Not by changing conversations or staging them to a new level, but by flipping down the shades alongside Louise and coasting merrily off the same cliff as her, as the only forseeable resolution to the troubles we'd gotten into.
Suki wrote:All I've objected to here was that you're not disagreeing correctly: You thought that Atilla's statement was unsubstantiated, so I showed that it was substantiated. I didn't quote all those sources to prove to you that atheists are mistrusted, but to prove to you that the statement was substantiated.
And, again, I never concerned myself with that. I was gung-ho on maintaining a dialogue with my boy Atilla, not this Tsukatu character, and was conversing on the same terms as Atilla. So when Tsukatu hopped into our car bound for the climax of the movie seconds after we careen thoughtlessly off of cliff, hand in hand, grinning, while the credits dialogue our happiest moments that weekend, he took it upon himself to apply the E-brake and check the oil gauge.
Suki wrote:Okay, dude, try to focus here: I am nice in person. The fact that you do not see me be nice on the intertubes is, as you have yourself stated, zero comment whatsoever about how I am in person. You have just finished saying, in that deepest level of quotes above, that you will continue to project my online persona to my offline persona despite this, even with the recognition that what you're saying is "ridiculous hyperbole." How is this not you admitting to being untruthful?
Bob Barker is a perfectly nice guy, and he's the PETA of PETA. Saying you're the PETA of atheists doesn't mean I think you're a mean dude. It means that I think you have a nearly overwhelming dedication to atheism that might inadvertently cause someone to have Jewblood poured on them. Secondly, I've never not admitted to being untruthful, nor would I ever.
Suki wrote:Following it up with "Googling 'Tsukatu' makes it obvious that you're an asshole" is completely fucking irrelevant because I obviously don't go by "Tsukatu" in person. I can't imagine why you would think that would be a valid point, at all. This entire tangent came from how I'm treated offline, in person, and you keep trying to argue by pulling in what you've already stated directly was information you not only couldn't possibly know, but information you've proudly declared you're going to invent, and that you'd specifically make it "ridiculous hyperbole."
*sigh*

From now on, presume I have the following disclaimer attached to all of my posts:

I know full well that Tsukatu is some made-up Internet persona. All of the comments expressed herein are no slight against the real person controlling Tsukatu. Just like when I say "I bet Detective Mack Taylor punches a bitch after he's done boning them", I'm not talking about Gary Sinise. I'm only extrapolating from a character on the show. Should I make comments about Tsukatu's real life behavior using information provided on the Internet about a character named Tsukatu, it is important that no one get the false impression I am referring to Suki's handler.
Suki wrote:"Heh, nah, I'm nicer in person." To my knowledge, this is the only distinction I've ever drawn between my offline self and online self. "You shroud yourself in mystery," "we don't know who you are," "we don't know who to talk about anymore," and the especially ridiculous, "it's something we're not allowed to talk about anymore," are such over-the-top exaggerations that it's actually pretty comical. Do you think I'm under some impression that I'm living a double life or something? From "nah, I'm nicer in person?"
I certainly find it odd that we're not allowed to imagine you in a supermarket or on a bus. Any real life examples we've conjured have required you to defend your persona.
Suki wrote:With your record of blowing everything I say out of proportion, I imagine you'd accuse me of thinking I'm a double agent if I casually mentioned that sometimes I prefer chocolate even though people know that I like vanilla. "You go so far out of your way to prove to everyone that you love vanilla until they're convinced, but then you talk in such spiteful tones when you describe all the times you secretly wanted chocolate but couldn't get it because it'd blow this identity you've built up around yourself. We're scared to confront you now with which one you actually want, Suki. It's become such an awkward time every time we get to the ice cream shop because we want to tell you that we're okay with any flavor you want, but it's almost become taboo to wrest you from the trauma you visibly have when staring at the ice cream containers. It's like you hate us for something you're choosing to do, and that just makes it more uncomfortable."
Hahahaha. This is, in fact, something I wish I'd have come up with. It's entirely something I'd say.
Suki wrote:To wit, I suppose that explains why we've even gotten this far in talking about the fact that I'm nice in person, because you place such overblown amounts of emphasis on it. I mean, this whole tangent started with Slaps suggesting (honestly, actually, which I appreciate) that I might have more trouble with persecution for my atheism because I'm vocal about it, and I said, "I'm not vocal about it." Then you come in out of the fucking blue with, "WE DON'T KNOW WHO YOU ARE ANYMORE, SUKI T_T" and ramble for fucking paragraphs about it. I've tried in vain to settle what I see is a trivial misunderstanding, but then again I think most of this conversation was centered on a trivial point until you spontaneously exploded with all the tricks in Dave's Book of Arguing Like An Asshat.
But seriously, "nah, I'm nicer in person." And this is how far it's come. Thanks for that.
It's really been culminating for a while. You've made comments before about how you act differently in person.

Secondly, my book contains tricks of conversing like an asshat. You made it into an argument starring Tsukatu H. Christ. I wish we in the community knew who you were anymore. You used to be a different dude. T_T

Suki wrote:Like, look, dude... Atilla said some shit and was wrong not to back it up. I agree that it was a good idea to challenge it. But not in the way you did. That's all this is about. That's all.
So this is about you challenging my method of challenging? That's seems a bit supraorder. Maybe you shoulda just let two brothas get their tizzy-talk on, instead of intervening. Because then I had to challenge you challenging the way that I challenge. We was handlin our bidnid. You brought the parallel mirrors onto the scene.
Image
The Real N Sex on the Xerox Space Pimp Online Super Fluffy Pack 1! Super Fluffy Pack 2! Super Crunchy Pack! Mother Thumping Impossible: 2005 MotY! Time is on My Side: 2006 PMotY! Survival map king! Best humor award! Best satire award! Best voice award! Inadvertently intimidating! Assholier than thou! Gdubs is totally back! WIS 14! Cyberzone creator! Clique creator! Most lines on IRC! Ventrilo moderator and regular! Certified Dungeon Master! Most modest person ever! ENTP! Incorrigible alcoholic! CHA 19! AMERICAN! Least pretentious! Elitist extraordinaire! Liberal libertarian! Incapable of experiencing love! Check Safe! Commodore of the Eldritch Seas! Archmagus of the Eleventh Hall! Sheriff of the Uncharted West! Godfather of the IRC Mafia! Pun enthusiast! Quadster! Challenging Dunbar's number! Wikipedian!Approves of 4th Edition! 1,000 Blank White Cards! radio_free_tetris! Migratory! INT 18! Doesn't know when he's being genuine, therefore cannot form lasting relationships with people! Really into black chicks! Even more into Indian chicks and Blasians! Hates moderators! Loves the C word! Tronster! Thinks we should play more Worms! Always wins iSketch! Owns a Wii! Plays as Pikachu in Smash Bros! Wrote literotica! Wrote anime fanfic! Sorta into Asians! Lived and loved the 80's and 90's! Chattiest sig! Cyberzone ][ creator! Operand of the Greater Space Pimp Continuum! Helped lead the forum move!Wizard Date! Participated in the blue_tetris takeover! Pithiest one-liners! Walkin' on, walkin' on broken glass! Seems to have an invisible touch! Economist! Mario hackster! Owner of the most complex D&D campaign setting! Micromanagerial! FREEDOM is all-American! Slowly distancing! Supports the Democrats! Supports the old GOP! CATO Institute fanboy! Penn and Teller fan! Large, in charge, and on a barge! Heralded by community as genius hero! Proud yet humble recipient of the Mare & Raigan Award for 2008! CON 9! Dave of Nazareth! Communist is annoyed with me! Not half bad at images! F.Y.I. I am a medic! It's a spook house, lame ball. Too bad! Space Pimp II: Rags 2 Bitches! F.Y.I. I am a spy! Entire team is babbies! STR 10! Sorta appreciating scythe and atob again, for new reasons! Played CS:S briefly! Welcome to Nebraska! Do you think you can Live! Heist! Portrayer of the mighty 88 Shells! Joyous proprietor of the future estate of Kablizzy and blue_tetris! It's Batmen all the way up! They brought crystals to a sceince fight; that's a good way to lose your cat! Even SlappyMcGee! I'm about to run out of either primates or sexually transmitted diseases! One-upper! Toaster oven clairvoyant Mythomaniac! That's the Magic of Macy's! Half of Half! Spend all my time making love, all my love making time!

User avatar
Boeing Boeing Bone!
Posts: 755
Joined: 2008.12.23 (05:44)

Postby Amadeus » 2009.08.23 (16:01)

You guys really need to cool down, shake it off, and move on.
People write to me and say, "I’m giving up, you’re not talking to me." I just write them a simple message like, "Never give up," you know? And it changes their life
http://greenbrown.bandcamp.com

User avatar
Demon Fisherman
Posts: 1265
Joined: 2008.09.19 (06:28)
NUMA Profile: http://nmaps.net/user/
MBTI Type: ENTP

Postby blue_tetris » 2009.08.23 (16:02)

Amadeus wrote:You guys really need to cool down, shake it off, and move on.
Get a job, hippie.
Image
The Real N Sex on the Xerox Space Pimp Online Super Fluffy Pack 1! Super Fluffy Pack 2! Super Crunchy Pack! Mother Thumping Impossible: 2005 MotY! Time is on My Side: 2006 PMotY! Survival map king! Best humor award! Best satire award! Best voice award! Inadvertently intimidating! Assholier than thou! Gdubs is totally back! WIS 14! Cyberzone creator! Clique creator! Most lines on IRC! Ventrilo moderator and regular! Certified Dungeon Master! Most modest person ever! ENTP! Incorrigible alcoholic! CHA 19! AMERICAN! Least pretentious! Elitist extraordinaire! Liberal libertarian! Incapable of experiencing love! Check Safe! Commodore of the Eldritch Seas! Archmagus of the Eleventh Hall! Sheriff of the Uncharted West! Godfather of the IRC Mafia! Pun enthusiast! Quadster! Challenging Dunbar's number! Wikipedian!Approves of 4th Edition! 1,000 Blank White Cards! radio_free_tetris! Migratory! INT 18! Doesn't know when he's being genuine, therefore cannot form lasting relationships with people! Really into black chicks! Even more into Indian chicks and Blasians! Hates moderators! Loves the C word! Tronster! Thinks we should play more Worms! Always wins iSketch! Owns a Wii! Plays as Pikachu in Smash Bros! Wrote literotica! Wrote anime fanfic! Sorta into Asians! Lived and loved the 80's and 90's! Chattiest sig! Cyberzone ][ creator! Operand of the Greater Space Pimp Continuum! Helped lead the forum move!Wizard Date! Participated in the blue_tetris takeover! Pithiest one-liners! Walkin' on, walkin' on broken glass! Seems to have an invisible touch! Economist! Mario hackster! Owner of the most complex D&D campaign setting! Micromanagerial! FREEDOM is all-American! Slowly distancing! Supports the Democrats! Supports the old GOP! CATO Institute fanboy! Penn and Teller fan! Large, in charge, and on a barge! Heralded by community as genius hero! Proud yet humble recipient of the Mare & Raigan Award for 2008! CON 9! Dave of Nazareth! Communist is annoyed with me! Not half bad at images! F.Y.I. I am a medic! It's a spook house, lame ball. Too bad! Space Pimp II: Rags 2 Bitches! F.Y.I. I am a spy! Entire team is babbies! STR 10! Sorta appreciating scythe and atob again, for new reasons! Played CS:S briefly! Welcome to Nebraska! Do you think you can Live! Heist! Portrayer of the mighty 88 Shells! Joyous proprietor of the future estate of Kablizzy and blue_tetris! It's Batmen all the way up! They brought crystals to a sceince fight; that's a good way to lose your cat! Even SlappyMcGee! I'm about to run out of either primates or sexually transmitted diseases! One-upper! Toaster oven clairvoyant Mythomaniac! That's the Magic of Macy's! Half of Half! Spend all my time making love, all my love making time!

User avatar
Queen of All Spiders
Posts: 4263
Joined: 2008.09.29 (03:54)
NUMA Profile: http://www.freeWoWgold.edu
MBTI Type: ENFP
Location: Quebec, Canada!

Postby SlappyMcGee » 2009.08.23 (16:49)

Incidentally, googling Constantine Perepilitsa wielded this: http://pastebin.ca/495465
Loathes

User avatar
Demon Fisherman
Posts: 1265
Joined: 2008.09.19 (06:28)
NUMA Profile: http://nmaps.net/user/
MBTI Type: ENTP

Postby blue_tetris » 2009.08.23 (16:51)

SlappyMcGee wrote:Incidentally, googling Constantine Perepilitsa wielded this: http://pastebin.ca/495465
HAHAHAHA.

I was every bit of correct, then, sirs.
Image
The Real N Sex on the Xerox Space Pimp Online Super Fluffy Pack 1! Super Fluffy Pack 2! Super Crunchy Pack! Mother Thumping Impossible: 2005 MotY! Time is on My Side: 2006 PMotY! Survival map king! Best humor award! Best satire award! Best voice award! Inadvertently intimidating! Assholier than thou! Gdubs is totally back! WIS 14! Cyberzone creator! Clique creator! Most lines on IRC! Ventrilo moderator and regular! Certified Dungeon Master! Most modest person ever! ENTP! Incorrigible alcoholic! CHA 19! AMERICAN! Least pretentious! Elitist extraordinaire! Liberal libertarian! Incapable of experiencing love! Check Safe! Commodore of the Eldritch Seas! Archmagus of the Eleventh Hall! Sheriff of the Uncharted West! Godfather of the IRC Mafia! Pun enthusiast! Quadster! Challenging Dunbar's number! Wikipedian!Approves of 4th Edition! 1,000 Blank White Cards! radio_free_tetris! Migratory! INT 18! Doesn't know when he's being genuine, therefore cannot form lasting relationships with people! Really into black chicks! Even more into Indian chicks and Blasians! Hates moderators! Loves the C word! Tronster! Thinks we should play more Worms! Always wins iSketch! Owns a Wii! Plays as Pikachu in Smash Bros! Wrote literotica! Wrote anime fanfic! Sorta into Asians! Lived and loved the 80's and 90's! Chattiest sig! Cyberzone ][ creator! Operand of the Greater Space Pimp Continuum! Helped lead the forum move!Wizard Date! Participated in the blue_tetris takeover! Pithiest one-liners! Walkin' on, walkin' on broken glass! Seems to have an invisible touch! Economist! Mario hackster! Owner of the most complex D&D campaign setting! Micromanagerial! FREEDOM is all-American! Slowly distancing! Supports the Democrats! Supports the old GOP! CATO Institute fanboy! Penn and Teller fan! Large, in charge, and on a barge! Heralded by community as genius hero! Proud yet humble recipient of the Mare & Raigan Award for 2008! CON 9! Dave of Nazareth! Communist is annoyed with me! Not half bad at images! F.Y.I. I am a medic! It's a spook house, lame ball. Too bad! Space Pimp II: Rags 2 Bitches! F.Y.I. I am a spy! Entire team is babbies! STR 10! Sorta appreciating scythe and atob again, for new reasons! Played CS:S briefly! Welcome to Nebraska! Do you think you can Live! Heist! Portrayer of the mighty 88 Shells! Joyous proprietor of the future estate of Kablizzy and blue_tetris! It's Batmen all the way up! They brought crystals to a sceince fight; that's a good way to lose your cat! Even SlappyMcGee! I'm about to run out of either primates or sexually transmitted diseases! One-upper! Toaster oven clairvoyant Mythomaniac! That's the Magic of Macy's! Half of Half! Spend all my time making love, all my love making time!

"Asked ortsz for a name change"
Posts: 3380
Joined: 2008.11.13 (16:47)

Postby otters~1 » 2009.08.23 (18:55)

SlappyMcGee wrote:Just that if -you- wanted to lock the topic, or if Dave wanted to unlock the topic and keep the conversation going, you easily could do so yourselves, so it's rather inappropriate for flagmyidol, who is largely uninvolved here, to request a lock, especially on your behalf.
I would be involved, if you guys were still talking about the OP. It's funny, yes, but it's not on-topic whatsoever. I requested a lock from Demonz--this being his forum--so that he would lock it, thus forcing Suki and Dave to unlock it to continue their "conversation." Then I would have clear grounds for impeachment.
the dusk the dawn the earth the sea

User avatar
Retrofuturist
Posts: 3131
Joined: 2008.09.19 (06:55)
MBTI Type: ENTP
Location: California, USA
Contact:

Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2009.08.23 (23:27)

The elements of the conversation have been getting separated and mixed within each other, and I don't feel like quoting several dozen quotes and trying not to repeat myself while I say the same thing, so let me conglomerate the issues I want to talk about:

Suki thinks that / Atilla's sources say that atheists are actively oppressed.

Atilla recalled some figure about atheists being mistrusted and, seeing that it was relevant to the conversation, mentioned it. He also added some useless fluff, as you do. When you challenged that notion, you talked about how, in your personal experience, you've never been harassed. Slaps has also done that just now -- he's never been harassed for his beliefs or lack thereof. When I brought in the sources to support Atilla's post, I did so to demonstrate that atheists were distrusted, and like I've said before, I only brought up harassment in person as part of my personal experience, the whole point of which was to demonstrate that personal experience varied. That's the only reason I brought in my personal experience -- as an example of how it can't be reliable -- and that's the only place I can possibly see that you started confusing my position with atheists being harassed.
Atilla wasn't talking about oppression, and neither was I. As far as I'm concerned, you changed the subject to oppression when you told us that you've never been oppressed. I have since said in this thread more than once that I'm still not talking about violence. I said that you were putting words in Atilla's mouth, and in mine, when you accused us of thinking those statistics were relevant to active oppression, and it's disheartening to see that you're still doing it. And you've since failed to realize that we're still not on the terms you've set up for us and tried to squeeze us into, wherein we're arguing that atheists are actively oppressed. Cuz, like, we've never said that.
At least, I haven't. I don't think Atilla did, either, though.


My disagreement.

This is, in fact, a meta-disagreement, yes. I disagree with the reason you disagree; I didn't think it was a valid reason to disagree, because it wasn't a reason. I am not accusing you of not being convinced by something that happened after the fact.
If it was the case that you disagreed on grounds beyond your personal experience, you didn't say it. I only addressed the disagreement you actually did give.
To be honest, I think what actually put me off the most was the double-whammy of trying to disqualify Atilla's reporting of the surveys because he's not an American even though those surveys do not rely on integration with the culture to understand, and then following it up with an attempted counter-point with anecdotal evidence.

In the end, if you have reasons to not trust those surveys (your USA Today thing, or whatever), then fine, good for you. I'm actually less interested in talking about this specific instance of disagreement-by-anecdote as I am with this larger issue that's come up:

blue_tetris wrote:Lemme get something to eat.
Bad form. Respect -50. :\


All sourceless information has equivalent meaning / value / validity, and that is none.

This is a gross oversimplification, even in the context of a casual conversation.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to be your reasoning for believing yourself justified in bringing up personal experience as a counter-point to Atilla:
  • Atilla mentioned some study.
  • He did not qualify it with sources, so it's only as good as his word.
  • An equivalent counter-point would be one worth as much, i.e. his word.
  • My personal experience carries as much weight as my word, therefore it's a suitable counter.
I think the fundamental grounds for my objection is the fact that you immediately discard any potential value to the evidence just because it wasn't immediately demonstrated to you. The way I see it to work is that an unqualified citation of a survey is like Schroedinger's Evidence: you don't know whether it's valid or not until you check, and until such time you should treat it as though it could be either. Any reference to personal experience in a context outside the scope of personal interaction, however, is like a Schroedinger's Cat experiment consisting of a cat boxed in with cyanide gas -- there's only one outcome any way you look at it, and that's a dead cat; personal experience cannot be a meaningful contribution, regardless of whether it's true or not. I also object to you murdering cats, because that's just terrible and makes you a terrible person.
Here's another way of looking at it: a survey is a collection of thousands of personal experiences, and so trying to overthrow the thousands with your own experience is like trying to knock down a brick wall with a grain of sand (or whatever the hell bricks are made of). It's not equivalent, nor could it hope to be. It was a counter-argument incapable of being effective.

Besides which, it just doesn't seem reasonable to me that a casual conversation would treat anecdotal evidence on the same grounds as (what is believed to be) compiled statistical data (even if it's made up). This conversation would never happen between reasonable people:
A: "Some hermit crabs are using man-made trash as shells."
B: "I saw this hermit crab this one time, and it was using a normal shell."
A: "TOUCHE INDEED, MY GOOD SIR. I CEDE MY POINT ENTIRELY."
I'm trying to be the Person C who says, "maybe you saw one besides the 'some'," but I get the impression that you actually expected your conversation with Atilla to go the above route.

I was about to make my own analogy to describe how perilous this line of thinking (i.e. reduction of the issue to "it's not known, so it's meaningless, and therefore on the same level as personal experience") could be, but then I realized your cliff analogy works just fine:
Atilla provided some evidence that would be meaningful if it was substantiated, and not meaningful if it isn't or is wrong. He jumped off the cliff with a parachute that he did not test beforehand.
You come in with the knowledge that Atilla hasn't tested his parachute, and so discard the possibility that it could function correctly. You figure that you will fare just as well with an anvil as Atilla will with his untested parachute (cuz, look, it isn't open yet), and so you jump off the cliff holding the anvil, content that you're doing just as good a job as Atilla.
The fact that it later turned out that Atilla's parachute worked perfectly isn't even the point: it was not a smart thing to do to reduce "maybe functional" to "effectively dysfunctional." Something that conditionally works is not in principle on the same level as something that never works (e.g. anecdotal evidence in a context outside the scope of personal interaction). The proper counter was to point out that Atilla's parachute was untested and ask him to test it, or to start proving that parachutes don't do what they're intended to do.
You could at least have waited at the cliff edge with the anvil to see if Atilla's parachute worked. If it did, you can spare yourself from the guaranteed failure of trying to match Atilla's performance with an anvil by dropping the anvil and walking away. Or if Atilla's parachute didn't work properly, then you could've jumped off with the anvil, afterwards pointing out that what you did was just as effective. Laughs would've been had, and Atilla would learn to test his parachute before jumping.
Where I come into the analogy is that I see Atilla jump and recognize the parachute as one that I know is reliable. So I don't say anything to Atilla, because I trust that he's going to be okay. Then I see you run to the edge of the cliff with an anvil in hand and a smug smile on your face. On your way down, I call you on your cell and say, "well that was stupid, wasn't it?" And while you zoom past Atilla as he pulls his cord, you and I are still yelling at each other about whether or not it was a terribly intelligent thing for you to do to jump off the cliff with the anvil.
[spoiler="you know i always joked that it would be scary as hell to run into DMX in a dark ally, but secretly when i say 'DMX' i really mean 'Tsukatu'." -kai]"... and when i say 'scary as hell' i really mean 'tight pink shirt'." -kai[/spoiler][/i]
spoiler

Image


User avatar
Queen of All Spiders
Posts: 4263
Joined: 2008.09.29 (03:54)
NUMA Profile: http://www.freeWoWgold.edu
MBTI Type: ENFP
Location: Quebec, Canada!

Postby SlappyMcGee » 2009.08.23 (23:46)

Maybe the grain of sand wouldn't do much to move the forest, or whatever the metaphor was. That doesn't mean we can't disagree with something because of it. Ultimately, when you are the Judge in the Supreme Court of Metanet Debate, and you look at arguments, Atilla's side has more evidence and you'll probably side with that. But that doesn't somehow make it wrong to disagree with Atilla. It's not an attack on Atilla's character that his experiences have been different and that statistics agree with him, and it certainly is not incorrect for us to share our experience and be skeptical of statistics. Ultimately, if someone were to read through this convoluted mess of a debate, they would probably side with Atilla, because Atilla has more proven evidence. (Actually, they would probably side with nobody, because wasn't this about currency and how expensive pennies are to make?) But it isn't the job of Tsukatu to come in and say, "You aren't entitled to disagree with him without hard facts."
Loathes

User avatar
Retrofuturist
Posts: 3131
Joined: 2008.09.19 (06:55)
MBTI Type: ENTP
Location: California, USA
Contact:

Postby t̷s͢uk̕a͡t͜ư » 2009.08.23 (23:48)

SlappyMcGee wrote:that doesn't somehow make it wrong to disagree with Atilla.
Tsukatu wrote:If it was the case that you disagreed on grounds beyond your personal experience, you didn't say it. I only addressed the disagreement you actually did give.
...
In the end, if you have reasons to not trust those surveys (your USA Today thing, or whatever), then fine, good for you.
[spoiler="you know i always joked that it would be scary as hell to run into DMX in a dark ally, but secretly when i say 'DMX' i really mean 'Tsukatu'." -kai]"... and when i say 'scary as hell' i really mean 'tight pink shirt'." -kai[/spoiler][/i]
spoiler

Image


User avatar
Queen of All Spiders
Posts: 4263
Joined: 2008.09.29 (03:54)
NUMA Profile: http://www.freeWoWgold.edu
MBTI Type: ENFP
Location: Quebec, Canada!

Postby SlappyMcGee » 2009.08.24 (00:33)

Tsukatu wrote:
SlappyMcGee wrote:that doesn't somehow make it wrong to disagree with Atilla.
Tsukatu wrote:If it was the case that you disagreed on grounds beyond your personal experience, you didn't say it. I only addressed the disagreement you actually did give.
...
In the end, if you have reasons to not trust those surveys (your USA Today thing, or whatever), then fine, good for you.
YEAH WELL I'M ALLOWED TO NOT READ ENGLISH BECAUSE GOD
Loathes

User avatar
Demon Fisherman
Posts: 1265
Joined: 2008.09.19 (06:28)
NUMA Profile: http://nmaps.net/user/
MBTI Type: ENTP

Postby blue_tetris » 2009.08.24 (00:58)

Tsukatu wrote:Suki thinks that / Atilla's sources say that atheists are actively oppressed.

Atilla recalled some figure about atheists being mistrusted and, seeing that it was relevant to the conversation, mentioned it. He also added some useless fluff, as you do. When you challenged that notion, you talked about how, in your personal experience, you've never been harassed. Slaps has also done that just now -- he's never been harassed for his beliefs or lack thereof. When I brought in the sources to support Atilla's post, I did so to demonstrate that atheists were distrusted, and like I've said before, I only brought up harassment in person as part of my personal experience, the whole point of which was to demonstrate that personal experience varied. That's the only reason I brought in my personal experience -- as an example of how it can't be reliable -- and that's the only place I can possibly see that you started confusing my position with atheists being harassed.
I got confused when you said confusing things. Atilla gave his invented information. I gave mine. Then you gave yours, (in an attempt to illustrate that it was incorrect to do?). So, when the folow-up would have naturally included more anecdotes from all involved parties, without strong concern for their fitness into the debate, it instead was a lofty supraorder discussion about how everyone except Suki should be discussing.
Suki wrote:Atilla wasn't talking about oppression, and neither was I. As far as I'm concerned, you changed the subject to oppression when you told us that you've never been oppressed. I have since said in this thread more than once that I'm still not talking about violence. I said that you were putting words in Atilla's mouth, and in mine, when you accused us of thinking those statistics were relevant to active oppression, and it's disheartening to see that you're still doing it. And you've since failed to realize that we're still not on the terms you've set up for us and tried to squeeze us into, wherein we're arguing that atheists are actively oppressed. Cuz, like, we've never said that.
Well, see, then we're arguing on two different terms. I believe, completely, that the arguement was about violence against atheists. In fact, I wasn't commenting about the nondescript numbers in Atilla's post. I was commenting about his perception (coupled with iangb's) that some ill intentions against atheists are found in the States. So that's where my anecdote came in. And that's where your counter-anecdote also comes in. Now, I don't know if your car has really been keyed, or if you've really convinced yourself to believe that. But I had no reason to view your comments as rhetorical device. I didn't see anything offputting about you wanting to join in our conversation about anecdotal shit.

We were all just talking like dudes. We weren't ganking the conversation into higher orders of ironic social-reflection. But if it's all just a grand misconception as to what the arguement is about, I would posit that we should agree to disagree. Only, we'll be agreeing that you suck and disagreeing that you ever didn't suck. Because you suck. Ballsacks.

Also, we're both equally guilty at distracting the initial issue as we delved further into this nonsense you perpetuated, Suki, only you're significatly more guilty. Because this "being an asshole" shit gets you off.

Suki wrote:My disagreement.

This is, in fact, a meta-disagreement, yes. I disagree with the reason you disagree; I didn't think it was a valid reason to disagree, because it wasn't a reason. I am not accusing you of not being convinced by something that happened after the fact.
If it was the case that you disagreed on grounds beyond your personal experience, you didn't say it. I only addressed the disagreement you actually did give.
To be honest, I think what actually put me off the most was the double-whammy of trying to disqualify Atilla's reporting of the surveys because he's not an American even though those surveys do not rely on integration with the culture to understand, and then following it up with an attempted counter-point with anecdotal evidence.
Atilla's claims fully lack cogency because he's an Aussie. He lives on an island with 2/3 the population of California. California is a culturally bereft place because it considers itself its own nation, subordinate to yet divorced from the US. It's a pompous little vadge-shaped bitch whoring up the Pacific rim. Now, take that exceptional ability to manufacture self-contained culture and multiply it by an impressive 2/3. That's Australia. It's a snobby little lazy hunk of earth filled with criminals mostly too retarded to fully understand lofty American concepts like turning plants that actually taste good (unlike salty, fucking vegetables) into spreads.

I highly doubt the people living on the rock will draw the correct conclusions from any numbers that a prominent American news agency will churn out.
Suki wrote:In the end, if you have reasons to not trust those surveys (your USA Today thing, or whatever), then fine, good for you.
It's a good thing I'm not a paranoid dude. I assume that all of those news agencies aren't lying to me when they put out numbers. And I also assume that people aren't lying to me when they give me information that is or isn't made of numbers.
Suki wrote:All sourceless information has equivalent meaning / value / validity, and that is none.

This is a gross oversimplification, even in the context of a casual conversation.
Please correct me if I'm wrong, but this seems to be your reasoning for believing yourself justified in bringing up personal experience as a counter-point to Atilla:
  • Atilla mentioned some study.
  • He did not qualify it with sources, so it's only as good as his word.
  • An equivalent counter-point would be one worth as much, i.e. his word.
  • My personal experience carries as much weight as my word, therefore it's a suitable counter.
I think the fundamental grounds for my objection is the fact that you immediately discard any potential value to the evidence just because it wasn't immediately demonstrated to you.
I don't see the worth of "potential value" if it's something you can manufacture by rewording something you're saying. I think manufacturing the potentiality of value is a simple process, yielding no truth value. I could have easily said: "I heard somewhere that atheists, on the whole, report as many car-keyings as members of other faiths." I've created a potentiality of value by restructuring what I've said to include "I heard somewhere", but it shouldn't deceive anyone into thinking there's more content there. It's as meaningless as attributing the situations described to a personal experience.
Suki wrote:The way I see it to work is that an unqualified citation of a survey is like Schroedinger's Evidence: you don't know whether it's valid or not until you check, and until such time you should treat it as though it could be either. Any reference to personal experience in a context outside the scope of personal interaction, however, is like a Schroedinger's Cat experiment consisting of a cat boxed in with cyanide gas -- there's only one outcome any way you look at it, and that's a dead cat; personal experience cannot be a meaningful contribution, regardless of whether it's true or not. I also object to you murdering cats, because that's just terrible and makes you a terrible person.
Here's another way of looking at it: a survey is a collection of thousands of personal experiences, and so trying to overthrow the thousands with your own experience is like trying to knock down a brick wall with a grain of sand (or whatever the hell bricks are made of). It's not equivalent, nor could it hope to be. It was a counter-argument incapable of being effective.
And in the gambling world, one might shore up $5 for a Shroedinger's Cat that's worth $10. But I think it's far more reasonable to demand the real cat and pay $10. If I'm given a Schroedinger's Cat, I'll provide one of my own (see below*). As I'm not a risk taker, I value potentially-true information as I do completely-false information. As currently false. Maybe if I am provided indisputable proof in the truth of Atilla's word, I'd value it more. For now, I don't believe in God what Atilla has said just because it's possibly true.

*Moreover, I don't see how a bit of anecdotal evidence is necessarily unusable, from an epistemological standpoint. I can see why it's hard to work with in Debate, but on a different scale or in a different medium, what someone has experienced might add to the discovery of what's truly going on more than a disinterested news agency's eye-in-the-sky view. Credibility is certainly an aspect of information that's not necessarily tied to statistics and USA Today, but to the veracity of the speaker--whoever it may be--and the clarity and consistency of the message.

Does this person often claim that he's been raped and car-keyed by Christies? Does this person have a track record for gaining personal pleasure in punching defenseless Asian infants? Maybe this is a guy whose word we shouldn't trust. :/

Is this source USA Today? Is this source Dave? Maybe this is an entity whose word has always been correct in the past.
Suki wrote:Besides which, it just doesn't seem reasonable to me that a casual conversation would treat anecdotal evidence on the same grounds as (what is believed to be) compiled statistical data (even if it's made up). This conversation would never happen between reasonable people:
A: "Some hermit crabs are using man-made trash as shells."
B: "I saw this hermit crab this one time, and it was using a normal shell."
A: "TOUCHE INDEED, MY GOOD SIR. I CEDE MY POINT ENTIRELY."
I'm trying to be the Person C who says, "maybe you saw one besides the 'some'," but I get the impression that you actually expected your conversation with Atilla to go the above route.
I would never have expected Atilla to cede at that point. We would have brought in more examples, varied them, and maybe one of us would have eventually supplied more relevant and credible information, and eventually strayed to a conversation about Thelma and Louise. Moving right along:

[quot="Suki"]I was about to make my own analogy to describe how perilous this line of thinking (i.e. reduction of the issue to "it's not known, so it's meaningless, and therefore on the same level as personal experience") could be, but then I realized your cliff analogy works just fine:
Atilla provided some evidence that would be meaningful if it was substantiated, and not meaningful if it isn't or is wrong.[/quote]

I consider anecdotes the same way. Meaningful if substantiated. Maybe more difficult to substantiate.
Suki wrote:He jumped off the cliff with a parachute that he did not test beforehand.
You come in with the knowledge that Atilla hasn't tested his parachute, and so discard the possibility that it could function correctly. You figure that you will fare just as well with an anvil as Atilla will with his untested parachute (cuz, look, it isn't open yet), and so you jump off the cliff holding the anvil, content that you're doing just as good a job as Atilla.
You'll find the Thelma and Louise cliff metaphor is universal in its scope. Also, I'm holding onto Atilla's hand and grinning as we fall, while the credits play and we review out weekend. So if his torn up but mildly fixable parachute deploys, my parachute that is equally torn up but more difficult to fix doesn't need to deploy. Either way, neither one of us is attempting to fix our parachute. With varying degrees of chute-tatteredness, we embrace the moment and highlight the best parts of the movie in what is an otherwise bleak set of circumstances, so that the 90's ahead seem a little less bleak.
Suki wrote:You could at least have waited at the cliff edge with the anvil to see if Atilla's parachute worked. If it did, you can spare yourself from the guaranteed failure of trying to match Atilla's performance with an anvil by dropping the anvil and walking away. Or if Atilla's parachute didn't work properly, then you could've jumped off with the anvil, afterwards pointing out that what you did was just as effective. Laughs would've been had, and Atilla would learn to test his parachute before jumping.
Not my way, bro. I'm not gonna leave Thelma hanging and hope things go well for her before I hop off the cliff, too. If Atilla entered into a conversation on weak grounds, I was going to converse on those same grounds (and act like an asshole where I could get away with it) and hope for the best. But I also didn't see the situation as grave as a Thelma and Louise affair, to break what was otherwise an amazing analogy. I saw it to be menial. We'd eventually sweep to more important areas of conversation. Y'know, as long as someone didn't go apeshit...**



**I'm not saying you go apeshit everywhere. "Debate forum" Suki may not be the same as "rest of the forums" Suki. All instances of "Debate forum" Suki acting in such a way as to imply apeshitness are to be taken piecemeal and as an example, albeit a weak one, of his "Debate forum" behavior with no impact on his "rest of the forums" behavior, let (certainly) alone his "real world" behavior. Any conjectures as to the behavior of alternate Tsukatus (or non-Tsukatu identities controlled by the same handler) are given in a parodic or satirical manner and should not be taken as valuable information regarding those completely separate behavior-sets.
Image
The Real N Sex on the Xerox Space Pimp Online Super Fluffy Pack 1! Super Fluffy Pack 2! Super Crunchy Pack! Mother Thumping Impossible: 2005 MotY! Time is on My Side: 2006 PMotY! Survival map king! Best humor award! Best satire award! Best voice award! Inadvertently intimidating! Assholier than thou! Gdubs is totally back! WIS 14! Cyberzone creator! Clique creator! Most lines on IRC! Ventrilo moderator and regular! Certified Dungeon Master! Most modest person ever! ENTP! Incorrigible alcoholic! CHA 19! AMERICAN! Least pretentious! Elitist extraordinaire! Liberal libertarian! Incapable of experiencing love! Check Safe! Commodore of the Eldritch Seas! Archmagus of the Eleventh Hall! Sheriff of the Uncharted West! Godfather of the IRC Mafia! Pun enthusiast! Quadster! Challenging Dunbar's number! Wikipedian!Approves of 4th Edition! 1,000 Blank White Cards! radio_free_tetris! Migratory! INT 18! Doesn't know when he's being genuine, therefore cannot form lasting relationships with people! Really into black chicks! Even more into Indian chicks and Blasians! Hates moderators! Loves the C word! Tronster! Thinks we should play more Worms! Always wins iSketch! Owns a Wii! Plays as Pikachu in Smash Bros! Wrote literotica! Wrote anime fanfic! Sorta into Asians! Lived and loved the 80's and 90's! Chattiest sig! Cyberzone ][ creator! Operand of the Greater Space Pimp Continuum! Helped lead the forum move!Wizard Date! Participated in the blue_tetris takeover! Pithiest one-liners! Walkin' on, walkin' on broken glass! Seems to have an invisible touch! Economist! Mario hackster! Owner of the most complex D&D campaign setting! Micromanagerial! FREEDOM is all-American! Slowly distancing! Supports the Democrats! Supports the old GOP! CATO Institute fanboy! Penn and Teller fan! Large, in charge, and on a barge! Heralded by community as genius hero! Proud yet humble recipient of the Mare & Raigan Award for 2008! CON 9! Dave of Nazareth! Communist is annoyed with me! Not half bad at images! F.Y.I. I am a medic! It's a spook house, lame ball. Too bad! Space Pimp II: Rags 2 Bitches! F.Y.I. I am a spy! Entire team is babbies! STR 10! Sorta appreciating scythe and atob again, for new reasons! Played CS:S briefly! Welcome to Nebraska! Do you think you can Live! Heist! Portrayer of the mighty 88 Shells! Joyous proprietor of the future estate of Kablizzy and blue_tetris! It's Batmen all the way up! They brought crystals to a sceince fight; that's a good way to lose your cat! Even SlappyMcGee! I'm about to run out of either primates or sexually transmitted diseases! One-upper! Toaster oven clairvoyant Mythomaniac! That's the Magic of Macy's! Half of Half! Spend all my time making love, all my love making time!

Hawaii Five-Oh
Posts: 919
Joined: 2009.03.06 (19:50)

Postby blackson » 2009.08.24 (03:21)

The area I live in is extremely dominated by Christians. If pressed, I'll say I'm Agnostic, I usually get off better. A few kids are open Atheists and get beaten up by some Christian kids for it.

...Irony?

User avatar
Demon Fisherman
Posts: 1265
Joined: 2008.09.19 (06:28)
NUMA Profile: http://nmaps.net/user/
MBTI Type: ENTP

Postby blue_tetris » 2009.08.24 (03:25)

Blackson wrote:The area I live in is extremely dominated by Christians. If pressed, I'll say I'm Agnostic, I usually get off better. A few kids are open Atheists and get beaten up by some Christian kids for it.
Well that settles it. I'm convinced of Suki's opinion now.

See. That's all it took, bro. Three. Three is equal to USA Today. Two is, like, Weekly World News.
Image
The Real N Sex on the Xerox Space Pimp Online Super Fluffy Pack 1! Super Fluffy Pack 2! Super Crunchy Pack! Mother Thumping Impossible: 2005 MotY! Time is on My Side: 2006 PMotY! Survival map king! Best humor award! Best satire award! Best voice award! Inadvertently intimidating! Assholier than thou! Gdubs is totally back! WIS 14! Cyberzone creator! Clique creator! Most lines on IRC! Ventrilo moderator and regular! Certified Dungeon Master! Most modest person ever! ENTP! Incorrigible alcoholic! CHA 19! AMERICAN! Least pretentious! Elitist extraordinaire! Liberal libertarian! Incapable of experiencing love! Check Safe! Commodore of the Eldritch Seas! Archmagus of the Eleventh Hall! Sheriff of the Uncharted West! Godfather of the IRC Mafia! Pun enthusiast! Quadster! Challenging Dunbar's number! Wikipedian!Approves of 4th Edition! 1,000 Blank White Cards! radio_free_tetris! Migratory! INT 18! Doesn't know when he's being genuine, therefore cannot form lasting relationships with people! Really into black chicks! Even more into Indian chicks and Blasians! Hates moderators! Loves the C word! Tronster! Thinks we should play more Worms! Always wins iSketch! Owns a Wii! Plays as Pikachu in Smash Bros! Wrote literotica! Wrote anime fanfic! Sorta into Asians! Lived and loved the 80's and 90's! Chattiest sig! Cyberzone ][ creator! Operand of the Greater Space Pimp Continuum! Helped lead the forum move!Wizard Date! Participated in the blue_tetris takeover! Pithiest one-liners! Walkin' on, walkin' on broken glass! Seems to have an invisible touch! Economist! Mario hackster! Owner of the most complex D&D campaign setting! Micromanagerial! FREEDOM is all-American! Slowly distancing! Supports the Democrats! Supports the old GOP! CATO Institute fanboy! Penn and Teller fan! Large, in charge, and on a barge! Heralded by community as genius hero! Proud yet humble recipient of the Mare & Raigan Award for 2008! CON 9! Dave of Nazareth! Communist is annoyed with me! Not half bad at images! F.Y.I. I am a medic! It's a spook house, lame ball. Too bad! Space Pimp II: Rags 2 Bitches! F.Y.I. I am a spy! Entire team is babbies! STR 10! Sorta appreciating scythe and atob again, for new reasons! Played CS:S briefly! Welcome to Nebraska! Do you think you can Live! Heist! Portrayer of the mighty 88 Shells! Joyous proprietor of the future estate of Kablizzy and blue_tetris! It's Batmen all the way up! They brought crystals to a sceince fight; that's a good way to lose your cat! Even SlappyMcGee! I'm about to run out of either primates or sexually transmitted diseases! One-upper! Toaster oven clairvoyant Mythomaniac! That's the Magic of Macy's! Half of Half! Spend all my time making love, all my love making time!

Hawaii Five-Oh
Posts: 919
Joined: 2009.03.06 (19:50)

Postby blackson » 2009.08.24 (03:31)

blue_tetris wrote:
Blackson wrote:The area I live in is extremely dominated by Christians. If pressed, I'll say I'm Agnostic, I usually get off better. A few kids are open Atheists and get beaten up by some Christian kids for it.
Well that settles it. I'm convinced of Suki's opinion now.

See. That's all it took, bro. Three. Three is equal to USA Today. Two is, like, Weekly World News.
I'm in no way saying that because I've seen Atheists been treated badly, that they are consistently treated badly across the Nation; that's just ignorant.

User avatar
Demon Fisherman
Posts: 1265
Joined: 2008.09.19 (06:28)
NUMA Profile: http://nmaps.net/user/
MBTI Type: ENTP

Postby blue_tetris » 2009.08.24 (03:35)

Blackson wrote:
blue_tetris wrote:
Blackson wrote:The area I live in is extremely dominated by Christians. If pressed, I'll say I'm Agnostic, I usually get off better. A few kids are open Atheists and get beaten up by some Christian kids for it.
Well that settles it. I'm convinced of Suki's opinion now.

See. That's all it took, bro. Three. Three is equal to USA Today. Two is, like, Weekly World News.
I'm in no way saying that because I've seen Atheists been treated badly, that they are consistently treated badly across the Nation; that's just ignorant.
It's important to be able to draw generalizations from patterns. Otherwise, the world is a meaningless vermillion soup.
Image
The Real N Sex on the Xerox Space Pimp Online Super Fluffy Pack 1! Super Fluffy Pack 2! Super Crunchy Pack! Mother Thumping Impossible: 2005 MotY! Time is on My Side: 2006 PMotY! Survival map king! Best humor award! Best satire award! Best voice award! Inadvertently intimidating! Assholier than thou! Gdubs is totally back! WIS 14! Cyberzone creator! Clique creator! Most lines on IRC! Ventrilo moderator and regular! Certified Dungeon Master! Most modest person ever! ENTP! Incorrigible alcoholic! CHA 19! AMERICAN! Least pretentious! Elitist extraordinaire! Liberal libertarian! Incapable of experiencing love! Check Safe! Commodore of the Eldritch Seas! Archmagus of the Eleventh Hall! Sheriff of the Uncharted West! Godfather of the IRC Mafia! Pun enthusiast! Quadster! Challenging Dunbar's number! Wikipedian!Approves of 4th Edition! 1,000 Blank White Cards! radio_free_tetris! Migratory! INT 18! Doesn't know when he's being genuine, therefore cannot form lasting relationships with people! Really into black chicks! Even more into Indian chicks and Blasians! Hates moderators! Loves the C word! Tronster! Thinks we should play more Worms! Always wins iSketch! Owns a Wii! Plays as Pikachu in Smash Bros! Wrote literotica! Wrote anime fanfic! Sorta into Asians! Lived and loved the 80's and 90's! Chattiest sig! Cyberzone ][ creator! Operand of the Greater Space Pimp Continuum! Helped lead the forum move!Wizard Date! Participated in the blue_tetris takeover! Pithiest one-liners! Walkin' on, walkin' on broken glass! Seems to have an invisible touch! Economist! Mario hackster! Owner of the most complex D&D campaign setting! Micromanagerial! FREEDOM is all-American! Slowly distancing! Supports the Democrats! Supports the old GOP! CATO Institute fanboy! Penn and Teller fan! Large, in charge, and on a barge! Heralded by community as genius hero! Proud yet humble recipient of the Mare & Raigan Award for 2008! CON 9! Dave of Nazareth! Communist is annoyed with me! Not half bad at images! F.Y.I. I am a medic! It's a spook house, lame ball. Too bad! Space Pimp II: Rags 2 Bitches! F.Y.I. I am a spy! Entire team is babbies! STR 10! Sorta appreciating scythe and atob again, for new reasons! Played CS:S briefly! Welcome to Nebraska! Do you think you can Live! Heist! Portrayer of the mighty 88 Shells! Joyous proprietor of the future estate of Kablizzy and blue_tetris! It's Batmen all the way up! They brought crystals to a sceince fight; that's a good way to lose your cat! Even SlappyMcGee! I'm about to run out of either primates or sexually transmitted diseases! One-upper! Toaster oven clairvoyant Mythomaniac! That's the Magic of Macy's! Half of Half! Spend all my time making love, all my love making time!


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 11 guests