The Shame Game

[Thenomain]

@Kanye-Qwest said in The Shame Game:

I'm just furious at all of you.

Your opinion about us is equally valid as @Coin's about your mom.

(edit: That was funnier before I saw it in print. Eesh.)

[Coin]

@Thenomain said in The Shame Game:

@Kanye-Qwest said in The Shame Game:

I'm just furious at all of you.

Your opinion about us is equally valid as @Coin's about your mom.

(edit: That was funnier before I saw it in print. Eesh.)

The opinion is a tentative thumbs-up.

[Kanye Qwest]

@Thenomain It wasn't bad, actually! I'm just furious no one even commented on the flat earth movement gaining support all over the globe.

I MEAN COME ON.

[Cheesegrater]

@Arkandel said in The Shame Game:

@Cheesegrater What do flat earthers say about calling their friends in different timezones at noon and it's night where they are?

They think the sun is moving along a circular track overhead. The opposite time zones are on the far side of the track.

[ThatGuyThere]

@Cheesegrater said in The Shame Game:

@Arkandel said in The Shame Game:

@Cheesegrater What do flat earthers say about calling their friends in different timezones at noon and it's night where they are?

They think the sun is moving along a circular track overhead. The opposite time zones are on the far side of the track.
So would that make the Earth a coin shaped thing in the center of the track? I am genuinely curious in the reasoning they use to support this presumption.

[Pandora]

@Kanye-Qwest said in The Shame Game:

It wasn't bad, actually! I'm just furious no one even commented on the flat earth movement gaining support all over the globe.

I see what you did there.

[Lithium]

@Ganymede said in The Shame Game:

And, yes, that's why we have Trump. Because many people are making judgments based solely on emotions. And their opinions are ignorant and therefore worthless.

In your opinion. Which is worthless to people who disagree with you. Therefor your opinion has the same weight as everyone elses.

[Lithium]

@Vorpal said in The Shame Game:

@Lithium said in The Shame Game:

@Ganymede This is a fallacy.

We can /try/ to not weigh opinions based on our feelings but that's a lot harder than it seems, and I'm willing to say that I believe most people can't do it. Not really. See Trump.

I agree with @Ganymede in this- I think you are wrong, to an extent. Rational thought and objectivity aren't automatic, they are volitional. Everybody can, in fact, do it. Most choose not to, mostly out of habit. Being rational is not something that comes automatically, it's something that has to be forced and practiced on habit consciously - excellence is not an act, but a habit.

Actually no. Not everyone can.

I get this all the time from my girlfriend and family, I sometimes assume that /everyone/ should be able to do the things I do, because they are easy to me. I just don't get how some people find Algebra is hard when I did higher tier math in my head.

Not everyone /can/ do the things you do, and I think that we, as a hobby group, probably do a lot of things easily that other people can't imagine. Like creative writing. Like thinking like other people do. Like taking the time to consider different view points.

Because we are Role-Players. We are Gamers. We get into the heads of other people all the time.

Most people don't do that. Most people can't fathom doing it. This is why most people cannot be objective when it comes to weighing opinions.

[Kanye Qwest]

Outside of some (really tragic) edge cases...you don't think everyone can use reason?

[ThatGuyThere]

@Kanye-Qwest said in The Shame Game:

Outside of some (really tragic) edge cases...you don't think everyone can use reason?

I think everyone or at least the vast majority can, however in actual practice I don't think most do not unless some circumstance forces them to.

Edited to insert the all important not into the sentence.

[Lithium]

@Kanye-Qwest said in The Shame Game:

Outside of some (really tragic) edge cases...you don't think everyone can use reason?

No I do not.

See Public Education and Politics for examples for why.

[Kanye Qwest]

@Lithium Oh ok, you're being hyperbolic.

[Vorpal]

@Lithium I think you are equivocating a systemic problem with an intrinsic problem. The fact that most public schools do not teach critical thinking nor most universities, nowadays, which leads to a culture where rational thinking and critical thinking are not exercised as a standard, does not mean that people are incapable of this. This kind of reasoning is akin to pointing out that there are people smashing every child's knees as soon as they learn to walk and then saying that people can't can learn to run.

As Kanye pointed out, some individuals are the exception to this rule- but that falls under the Broken Unit concept.

[Lithium]

@Vorpal @Kanye-Qwest

No I am being utterly serious.

We have schools which are refusing to teach natural selection and other sciences. We have schools that are cutting art and music classes. We have people who are refusing to see any other point but their own when it comes to simple life choices. We have politicians who are making it illegal to be comfortable to go to the bathroom if you're remotely different from the 'norm' regardless of the damage it does. In the news currently there is a father who says that '20 minutes of action' has ruined his sons life, when it was 20 minutes of sexual assault on a passed out drunk woman. We have presidential candidates who's opinion is that Global Warming is a myth, and yet, they site Global Warming as a reason to build a seawall to protect their golf courses.

The average IQ is around 100. People as a whole /cannot/ think objectively, they don't have the capability or the desire to.

If there are any who buck that trend and can do these things, it's us.

We are not the majority.

There is a saying that was true when it was first said, and it's still true today.

A person can be smart.

People are stupid.

The value of an opinion, which is what started all this, is individual. That the general 'you' value one opinion higher than someone else does not intrinsically make that opinion more valuable, or have more merit, because it's still just an opinion and everyone is free to form their own opinions or assign their own weight/value to an opinion.

'Your' opinion is any better, or worse, than anyone else's to them.

Thus they all have equal value in the grand scheme of things.

Clearly some of you here do not value my opinion, no matter what 'reasoning' I use to justify it because you disagree with it. Which entirely proves my point.

[Thenomain]

@Lithium

See, what you're trying to do is make a statement of fact, and statements of fact can, and should, be tested. Facts can be right and wrong. Or both.

I don't disagree with you because of who you are--in fact, after our colossal misunderstanding a few months ago I was giving you more support than I give most people because of who they are--but because I disagree with the foundations of your argument.

Not your opinion, your argument. This has nothing to do with opinion. In fact, I find boiling everything down to opinion to be dangerous, and part of the problem that has let Intelligent Design push its way into classrooms. Boiling things down to opinion means that they can be dismissed, even if what they're dismissing is not really opinion.

I'm going to let Ganymede to the heavy logical lifting on this topic, but I was having problems biting my tongue.

---

To the person I promised I wouldn't do this, sorry. I tried to remain in the realm of reason.

[Ganymede]

@Thenomain said in The Shame Game:

I'm going to let Ganymede to the heavy logical lifting on this topic, but I was having problems biting my tongue.

There are times when there is no purpose in engaging. Here's one of them.

My opinion is worthless to @Lithium, and I've already made it sufficiently clear. As I'm confident my opinion is buttressed by generations of jurisprudence, philosophical musings, and writings that I care not to cite to, I am comfortable in resting on what I've said.

[Tyche]

@Lithium said in The Shame Game:

The average IQ is around 100. People as a whole /cannot/ think objectively, they don't have the capability or the desire to.

The median IQ is 100 and it will always be ~100 because IQ tests are normalized every few years.

[Warma Sheen]

@Lithium said in The Shame Game:

We have schools which are refusing to teach natural selection and other sciences. We have schools that are cutting art and music classes. We have people who are refusing to see any other point but their own when it comes to simple life choices. We have politicians who are making it illegal to be comfortable to go to the bathroom if you're remotely different from the 'norm' regardless of the damage it does. In the news currently there is a father who says that '20 minutes of action' has ruined his sons life, when it was 20 minutes of sexual assault on a passed out drunk woman. We have presidential candidates who's opinion is that Global Warming is a myth, and yet, they site Global Warming as a reason to build a seawall to protect their golf courses.

In each instance you have someone acting in their own self-interest. That in itself is a rational thing to do and each example you cited disproves your point.

Just because someone says something or does something you don't agree with does not mean that they are incapable of rational thought - no matter how much you might wish it to be true.

Your strongest argument is your own refusal to see what everyone else sees. However, you've proven yourself capable of rational thought before so even that is just proof that "anecdotal evidence" is not actual evidence.

[Kanye Qwest]

@Lithium Not being practiced at something, or choosing not to do it != incapable of using reason.

Also, I google defined "reason" for fun and this is topical.

the power of the mind to think, understand, and form judgments by a process of logic.
"there is a close connection between reason and emotion."

Nice example sentence.

[Duntada]

@Cheesegrater said in The Shame Game:

@ThatGuyThere said in The Shame Game:

You can measure the angle we can view the sun at different places to be different at the same time, and the difference could not be accounted for solely by the variance of the sun's position.

A flat earther would point out that Eratosthenes' math also works out if the earth is flat and the sun is both small and close by.

Well I mean, look at it, if I hold a quarter out about arms length it would block the whole thing. It can't be that big!