keiths
Posts: 2195 Joined: Jan. 2006
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clamboy: Quote | keiths - my first reading of your first line was in the spirit of, "Damn it all, clamboy!" Hee, I liked that. |
Heh. Quote | Okay, I take your point, but please take mine: this is NOT about what I might have to say (if anything). It is about your recent behavior at The Skeptical Zone, said behavior having made The Skeptical Zone boring. |
TSZ is for the discussion of controversial ideas, and sometimes that can be boring, especially when people become stubborn and won't concede points. We've all seen it, all over the Internet. Quote | I have praised your posts once before, and meant it, dude!!! |
Thanks. Quote | But I believe that your recent behavior has, among other things, contributed to the loss of several other posters whose work helped TSZ to rock like DRI on their first album. |
Who do you believe that we lost due to my behavior, and what specifically do you think were the reasons? Quote | Humbly letting things go once in a while could really grease the wheels there - make that engine roar again, as it were. |
By "letting things go", what do you actually mean?
For example, the current discussion on the Scruton thread came about, after a week of quiescence, because Alan wanted to know why I thought his views were mistaken. I didn't want to ignore him, and I wasn't going to patronize him by pretending that he was right -- especially considering what he is claiming: that the behavior of soldier ants doesn't require a genetic explanation. Are you suggesting that I should have pretended to be wrong? Or that I should I have ignored him when he asked about his errors?
To me, the problem is that Alan is refusing -- and has been refusing for a couple of weeks -- to admit an obvious mistake, and I don't want to lie to him merely for the sake of smoothing things over. It's been the same with petrushka/midwifetoad and Neil Rickert. I'm not going to patronize those guys or lie to them. So what, specifically, are you suggesting?
Also, it's interesting that I never got any flak about this when I was directing my criticisms at UDers. Are you sure this doesn't have something to do with the fact that Alan, petrushka and Neil are on "our side" of the ID debate? I'm not particularly "tribal", and I have no problem agreeing with the "other side" or disagreeing with "our side" when it's appropriate.
My feeling is that The Skeptical Zone is The Skeptical Zone, and that anyone's views -- including mine -- are fair game for criticism by anyone.
I do understand that some people have a very hard time admitting mistakes. If they were relatives, or in-laws, or coworkers, then it might be worthwhile to pretend that I was wrong, just for the sake of harmony.
But we're talking about TSZ, where discussion and debate are the entire point. I just don't see how it makes sense to coddle these guys or pretend to be wrong, any more than we coddle William and the other UDers.
An important part of maturity is being able to admit your mistakes, and I'm just not willing to tiptoe around the egos of people who haven't learned that skill -- especially not on a site called The Skeptical Zone.
-------------- And the set of natural numbers is also the set that starts at 0 and goes to the largest number. -- Joe G
Please stop putting words into my mouth that don't belong there and thoughts into my mind that don't belong there. -- KF
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