"Serious Business"

[Irion]

Frankly, I was surprised when the original gun debate was locked; I'm not sure why it was. Yeah, the discussion was a bit heated, yeah people can act like dicks, yeah it is a given that there will never ever be consensus on the topic. That doesn't mean it isn't worth discussing and debating (while actively filtering out the bullshit). I assumed some FHC rule was violated (maybe I need to review the rules again).

But anyway, I'm glad there is now a subforum where controversial topics can get airtime without fear of being locked. The gun debate interests me. I'm sure there will be other threads that interest me as well. Maybe I won't post much or at all in any of them, but it's only worth following them if I CAN actively participate should the spirit move me. While I appreciate the intent to encourage/require quality posting by "pre-vetting" who can post there, I feel strongly that no one (even our most accomplished FHC trolls) should be excluded until they give the mods a good contextual reason to do so (and permission groups make such user management real easy). But then again, I'm a lot more tolerant than our esteemed mods--I love to watch a good train wreck in progress

The problem with the gun debate is it has reared its ugly head before and always turned into a massive shitstorm.

[Lallante]

What Lallante is talking about is this ridiculous notion that all viewpoints should be allowed equal time. "We're all entitled to our opinions" being a particularly vacuous statement on par with aforementioned notion. If a large segment of society is poorly educated, lacks critical thinking skills, and holds to some irrational belief, it is detrimental to people above that segment to spend time in every goddamn discussion reiterating old arguments to those people. It's going to accomplish nothing and most of the arguments have already been had.

We've had the global warming debate on FHC in length at least once and the only reason it wasn't a complete and utter waste of electrons is because one or two people had vaguely new arguments or points to make about particular details. Unless and until a new discovery is made, or on the infinitesimal chance that there is some key point that people who have educated themselves on this topic are unaware of, it is nothing but a boring useless tangent to get into it again.

This is why you make a wiki. Because rehashing the same fucking points repeatedly is retarded. You note them down somewhere, and when someone brings them up for the 50th time, you can link them to it and tell them to fuck off. Something like, I don't know, wikipedia. But then its integrity comes into question and then what, you have to start going into the debate again anyway.

Anyway I'm with Mrenda. There are arguments that have been had enough times that they have moved forward by most people. But then someone not familiar (lets say that, rather than 'uneducated') with it will always show up and then we start all over again.

Frug while this is obviously true and the "we are all entitled to our opinions" bullshit is something I've railed against in many threads in the past (and FHC is not particulary guilty of this either, compared to most forums), if you pre-judge who or what opinions are "acceptable" then you risk (or more realistically, guarantee) shutting out legitimate arguments because they superficially seem "dumb" or come from a poster who holds an unrelated view you consider "dumb". This becomes exponentially more true as you venture into controversial topics, where fringe viewpoints abound.

Please don't confuse listening to someone once on a particular topic and then telling him he is an idiot and ignoring him on that topic, with refusing to listen to him in the first place.

There are other forums that use similar principles for who is allowed to post - specifically I'm thinking of evangelical christian forums where expressing scepticism or rational analysis earns you a permenant ban. Those guys "know" that their worldview is correct and aren't interested in listening to "dumb" agnostics or atheists either.

[Lallante]

Tbh the only difference between Al Simmons style of posting and that of Frug, Ralara or Barth (arbitrary picks, nothing personal!) is that he holds an extreme minority viewpoint. Very few posters are doing a better job of defending their views, they just rely on the fact that most other posters inherently agree with their base assumptions.

Tbh the more I read this thread the more I realise we are the worst. Al hasn't said anything controversial in this thread AT ALL (in fact he has been perfectly reasonable, though disclaimer I'm onlu up to p14), and people are shitting all over him because they feel he isn't worth engaging with.

If thats what the srs forum is about, enjoy your members-only circlejerk because I will keep starting political threads in the general forum so I can get the viewpoints of a range of people with different backgrounds and experiences rather than the generic "20-30-something reasonably intelligent internet savvy liberal" demographic median view.

[Lallante]

You were the one insulting people. You said that everyone on here is an "armchair lawyer." Which at the very least is insulting to the people who actually are lawyers, is sort of insulting to the people who have been trained in law and is broadly insulting to all the people who have expertise in their own particular area.

You're the one being insulting saying no-one has authority to speak when a huge amount of people on here do have authority to speak on subjects related to their field of expertise.

Do we actually have any lawyers here? And just because you might have studied one part of law doesn't make you an expert on all of it.

FFS whatever, I didn't want to get dragged into this thread.

Um, Lallante, for one?

And don't be so obtuse, of course studying "law" doesn't make you an expert in "all of it", but neither is Dawkins an expert in ALL biology and Hawking is not an expert in ALL physics. But it does mean they know a hell of a lot more than an unemployed bum who is scared to leave the house, takes handouts from the government because "why shouldn't I?" (your words) and will not better himself because he's too fucking lazy.

Lallante is a really bad example and I knew you'd bring him up, which is pretty weak. And what does the second part of your post have to do with anything? At all? Yeah somebody who's been to university and got a good degree is probably smarter than me, or at least better at applying themselves at studying. Doesn't mean their opinion is automatically right, and doesn't mean you're not a mean spirited twat.

/signed. This is just the fallacy of appeal to authority. If we relied on this principle all threads would become: OP, long wait for qualified poster, qualified poster response, /thread. I would also be the last word in law as I practice it at the highest level and have the strongest supporting academics. I'm clearly not - I know a lot about law but like almost every other topic worth debating there is a huge range of "right answers" or "correct opinions", I can just tell you my (informed) take on it, which might, in any case, be outdated, misremembered or misapplied (and therefore wrong) despite my supposed qualifications.

[marcus xero]

This is a bad thread.

Sent from my HTC Desire using Tapatalk 2

[Lallante]

Tl;Dr of this thread:

"Hey the problem with all these debate threads is that people I disagree with keep posting"
"I've got an idea, lets just exclude them"
"Awesome, the threads will be so interesting now only one narrow viewpoint is allowed".

[Diicc Tater]

Tl;Dr of this thread:

"Hey the problem with all these debate threads is that people I disagree with keep posting"
"I've got an idea, lets just exclude them"
"Awesome, the threads will be so interesting now only one narrow viewpoint is allowed".

Fuck you, you are stupid, ugly and you smell really really bad.
(I think someone thought it'd be easier to moderate that way)

[filingo]

i wondered if my instant dismissal of the shitty business forum was warranted.

then i saw the angry pony guy is posting a lot in there.

derision justified.

[Ophichius]

i wondered if my instant dismissal of the shitty business forum was warranted.

then i saw the angry pony guy is posting a lot in there.

derision justified.

Angry pony guy?

Yeah, fuck that dude with a rake.

-O

[Derpy Torrin]

Still waiting for acceptance in to serious forums so I can post my unique ponypoint all over it.

[Cippalippus]

Got to agree with Lallante fully. A serious business forum doesn't need to be membership only, but just moderated heavily so that "snypas", bullshit posts and general crap can get an instant suspension. The way it is now, it's just a bad circlejerk.

[Durzel]

As a rule I don't think you can flipflop between high-brow (faux or real) intellectual discourse and outright offensive posting. That's not to say clever people aren't capable of trolling or shouldn't take people to task for things, but I tend to think that moderation and level-headedness is as much a part of being an intellectual as the actual knowledge is.

In other words, if you post something lucid in between venomously abusing people ("lol it's the internet it doesn't count/it's not real abuse!") then I don't think you can really be considered "above" the people who are being disparaged because they are simply misinformed or uninformed.

I do agree however with Frug's point regards having to re-tread the same steps over and over because of having to deal with a wide range of opinions, experience and intelligence. That's just forums for you though, outside of trolling you just have to accept that this is par for the course.

As a bootnote, intelligent people are neither necessarily nor automatically informed on every subject that happens to be talked about and are often just as likely as uninformed people, perhaps more so because of an attitude that they are "cleverer than the proles", to be resistant to being told they are wrong.

[Derpy Torrin]

Got to agree with Lallante fully. A serious business forum doesn't need to be membership only, but just moderated heavily so that "snypas", bullshit posts and general crap can get an instant suspension. The way it is now, it's just a bad circlejerk.

Agreeing with Lallante will get you a ban half the time.

We have bad and lazy mods, deal with it.

[Cippalippus]

But seriously, this is an internet forum that revolves around a bad videogame of make-believe internet spaceships, full of people that you will probably never meet if you aren't going to book a ticket for iceland to spend some time with smelly nerds. How could anyone possibly get angry (irl) about anything?

[Cippalippus]

Got to agree with Lallante fully. A serious business forum doesn't need to be membership only, but just moderated heavily so that "snypas", bullshit posts and general crap can get an instant suspension. The way it is now, it's just a bad circlejerk.

Agreeing with Lallante will get you a ban half the time.

We have bad and lazy mods, deal with it.

Yeah well, you have 60 posts and a pony avatar so I don't think you're worth a damn in any case.

[Derpy Torrin]

Got to agree with Lallante fully. A serious business forum doesn't need to be membership only, but just moderated heavily so that "snypas", bullshit posts and general crap can get an instant suspension. The way it is now, it's just a bad circlejerk.

Agreeing with Lallante will get you a ban half the time.

We have bad and lazy mods, deal with it.

Yeah well, you have 60 posts and a pony avatar so I don't think you're worth a damn in any case.

In 3 weeks my postcount will blot out the sun.

[Cippalippus]

Cool, you'll still be a fag that likes a TV show made for little girls though.

[Derpy Torrin]

Cool, you'll still be a little girl that likes a TV show made for little girls though.

FYP

[Cippalippus]

A neckbeard trying to convince other people on the internet that he's, in fact, a little girl. To justify that he likes MLP.

And I thought furries were bad.

[Azure]

Frug while this is obviously true and the "we are all entitled to our opinions" bullshit is something I've railed against in many threads in the past (and FHC is not particulary guilty of this either, compared to most forums), if you pre-judge who or what opinions are "acceptable" then you risk (or more realistically, guarantee) shutting out legitimate arguments because they superficially seem "dumb" or come from a poster who holds an unrelated view you consider "dumb". This becomes exponentially more true as you venture into controversial topics, where fringe viewpoints abound.

Please don't confuse listening to someone once on a particular topic and then telling him he is an idiot and ignoring him on that topic, with refusing to listen to him in the first place.

There are other forums that use similar principles for who is allowed to post - specifically I'm thinking of evangelical christian forums where expressing scepticism or rational analysis earns you a permenant ban. Those guys "know" that their worldview is correct and aren't interested in listening to "dumb" agnostics or atheists either.

Ding Ding.

+rep