snaxalotl
Posts: 9 Joined: Oct. 2005
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I'm guessing peach has confused elemental production order in stars with order of production in the universe. It seems like his mind is a grab bag of half understood facts read at random, but down at the church youth group this accords him hero worship as scientific genius master of all scientific knowledge ("oh please, genius master, delight us again with an explanation of what foolishness evolution is"). The result you see is an irritating combination of ignorance and inability to back down from a pronouncement. His inability to come to terms with a single simple fact shows how pointless it is to tackle something more complex with him. How can you guys argue with someone so boring? You're wasting your time unless you draw him into some investment in his statements, because just competently refuting him is something he is emotionally immune to. For example, instead of responding "wrong about helium, blah blah blah", I think it needs to be more like this: "really magnificent peach, is that a true fact about helium"? "ok, because I didn't know that in my insignificance. are you sure of that? can I take that fact to the bank?" "so, if helium WASN'T the first element, you'd be WRONG then"? "well, of course you're not wrong, but IF you were wrong over a basic fact like this that would make you some kind of moron"? "sure, but if, say, hydrogen came first, that would mean you're a moron"? "yes, but you'd have to be a TOTAL MORON to get a point like this wrong, right"? "then what about blah blah blah..."?
unless you can draw out some sort of emotional investment which might make him actually consider the negative ramifications of being TOTALLY EFFING WRONG as usual, then you are dealing with an unstoppable random BS generator, and you might as well argue with the Eliza computer program.
-------------- Quid quid Latine dictum sit, altum viditur
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