Wheels, the problem is that most all of your opinions use that same kind of faulty logic. Do you have any idea the time and effort it took to explain to you how to make simple inferences on the topic of global warming? It took almost two weeks of back and forth posts, with an average of 4 hours a day breaking down your responses, providing you with properly cited, peer reviewed research, explaining how to find said research, typing out a response and editing it for clarity, and decompressing all that I could afterward. And you know how I finally won you over? Not with actual, peer reviewed research that took hours to cultivate and break down and explain to you, not with arguments in logic or angered responses, not with graph after graph after graph, not with a plead to figure out how to make simple, basic inferences,
but by casually explaining how the scientific process works in this field.And you know what happened in the meantime? The charts and graphs and citations
pushed people away and off of the board. Do you have any idea how frustrating and ridiculous that is? I could likely take on every single one of your faulty ideas and break it into its component parts and change your mind, but doing the math, it would take me literally months upon months, working every single day with you as though it was a full time job, because
get this: it is.
You're just not worth my time, in that respect. You claim diversity of media sources, but from the majority of what you post, it is very clear that isn't true. When confronted with a great plethora of evidence, you have a tendency to cry bias, or at worst, claim a functional conspiracy
while simultaneously declaring that there is no conspiracy. You cite just ....terrible, terrible sources, ranging from snake oil salesmen trying to sell their books independently ("I'll tell you the REAL secrets of health care reform!...but BUY MY BOOK TO GET THEM!"), to figures that have made their careers out of cultivating partisan politics (ie - Jonah Goldberg...you might as well cite Ann freakin' Coulter.) while claiming them to be reliable just because
they keep insisting that they're not being partisan. Worst, you're one of the worst offenders of the "no true Scotsman" style of argument I've ever encountered (ie - completely absolving conservatism when it comes up short via its representatives by shifting who is an "actual" conservative, from the GOP to the Tea Party to Libertarians to the platform of the GOP pre-WWII).
Most frustratingly, I don't feel like the energy I have expended has earned any sort of benefit of the doubt from you. That, in a nutshell, is why I don't want to even try anymore regarding your posts. At one time or another, I have locked horns with Hardcase, Russianassassin01, Ktob, Kuz, and jfriley. Sometimes nothing gets changed. Sometimes they change, sometimes, I change. I think the biggest change to my opinion was my thoughts on the Iraqi War. That was thanks to jfriley's explanations as to the long-term good it would do and his explanations as to how the rules of war had changed due to war itself changing. Sometimes, these back and forth posts just end up as goofy jokes, because someone realizes that they can no longer defend their position, so they just put up a gif.
Hell, finn and I are usually adversaries when it comes to what we discuss on the board, but there's still a good deal of respect and such for one another's opinions, even if we don't agree. But there is always some sort of buffer of the benefit of the doubt there, something that we have
earned with one another.
I have spent, by far, the most time and effort on you personally, and have received nothing from you. Despite taking the time over and over again to methodically and meticulously take your hand and walk with you through discussion after discussion, often exposing BIG, GAPING holes in your arguments and theories that make the thrust of these thesis' unreliable at best and fabrications at the worst, you demand that every. Single. Detail. Be. Broken. Down. No matter. How. Negligible. Every. Single. Time. ...before you even
consider the idea of
reconsidering your opinion. And then I DO that, only to have to do it again the VERY NEXT TIME. You know what that means to me? That means that I haven't earned a damned cent of your benefit of the doubt, or a quantum of credibility with you for everything I've put in. It means I am, in effect, starting from scratch every single time I talk to you, and not the guy who has worked tirelessly with you, simply out of a duty that I feel I have, in order to expand your ideas.
Well, I'm tired now, and I'm not going to do it anymore. Responding to you earns me nothing, wastes my time, pushes people out of the boards, and tires me out. For what? I've put forth as good a faith effort as I feel I can, and I can walk away now without thinking that I've somehow failed to uphold my duties. So if you want to go on those long responses with really faulty logic, citing terrible sources, failing to make any obvious negative inferences just because the person is making a politically conservative argument, go ahead. But if you want to actually learn something? My last piece of advice is the same as it's always been: get off the boards and do what you can to diversify your resources and fact check them, as honestly as you can. One of the hardest things in the world is to be honest with yourself.
finnegan wrote:
Yeah and? The gassing part is where? Listen "dude" just concede you are wrong its ok.
Unlike Wheels you have not convinced me of any global warming bs. Which is what it is, bullshit. Its climate change, normal course of geological time. The global warming movement is another avenue for those on the left to control behavior. So put that in your gas tank and rev it up.
I admit you never said anything about gassing people, I apologize. If you care to hear my logic for this statement, it was that my inference was because you were referencing fascism and totalitarian regimes, and these regimes have a history of quelling dissent via genocide and execution, that it would be a natural to connect any sort of argument that having a maximum beverage container size of 16oz. as the first step toward a totalitarian government to the consequence of these regimes, which include genocide and execution (by various means, including gassing).
Again, my mistake.
As far as the global warming thing goes, if you choose to not believe the science and it's conclusion, that's your opinion and choice. But it's only that: an opinion and a choice. I can choose to believe that my tv contains tiny magical people in it, but that doesn't make my opinion correct about how television actually works. I've done what I can to provide the clearest and most concise evidence and explanation of global warming for Wheels and everyone else who has questions and doubts of its soundness; it's all I can do.
