eigenstate
Posts: 78
Joined: Nov. 2011
|
| Quote (Febble @ Feb. 19 2012,12:27) | | tbh I don't see anything "noble" in the policy, especially. As I keep trying to emphasise the rules are not moral rules, merely rules intended to try to keep discussion focussed on the actual arguments, rather than on the motivations. |
OK, I guess it's a semantic difference, only, then. That's quite a noble goal, I say. If you read some of my more tiring jeremiads at UD and elsewhere, it basically reduces to "why can't we keep focused on the actual substance"?
This is where Gil Dodgen put himself in the kill zone. If the discussion were to focus on the actual arguments, on the "simple math" that he claims is untenable, he's toast. And he knows it. He had to sit there, intimidated by olegt simple and straightforward request and think: <i>how to respond?</i>
One one hand, he could just not respond at all. Given that he'd perhaps like to keep posting at TSZ, simply not responding is likely to haunt him, as members who got left hanging are likely to remind him that he never responded as he'd said he would.
On the other hand, if he did try to respond on the merits, and make some noises about the odds of this happening or that, and olegt is just waiting, next time he check in from real life, to see Gil's nonsense, and unceremoniously dismantle it as the bullshit it is. A dozen more, including you (politely, of course), are ready and waiting to do the same, and Gil knows that course only brings discredit and humiliation on the merits.
Gil resents both of these options, and so goes with the "fuck you, I'll give you a non-answer that I will pretend is a solid answer, and you can't call me on it, because my motives are protected by the policies of this place". I again approve of that policy, and enjoy such protections (even if I expect more of myself than to have to hide behind them constantly by answer in ways that others understand me to be posting in bad faith).
Gil's resentment and animus, not just for the people he's talking to, but for the process, the kind of debate and analysis that threaten his superstitions, and more importantly, his narcissistic life narrative, are such that you and we will get the middle finger. Every time.
| Quote |
If people make bad arguments because they are more interested in an answer that supports their preconceptions, then it should be possible to demonstrate the badness of the argument without discussing the preconceptions, and in my experience, focussing on the alleged preconceptions merely distracts from the badness of the arguments. |
I don't dispute this. But the problem I'm looking at with Gil's response is far more basic than that. He's a good Christian boy who's not going to say "fuck off, Liz" in those words, but as a former Christian yourself like me (right?), you know as well as I do that Christians are as capable as anyone at saying "fuck off", just without using those words.
Woodbine's post went to the guano section, for reasons I understand and agree with. But there was nothing approaching the kind of "fuck you" Gil deposited on your thread, and which stayed there.
I get that, not trying to re-argue that. What I'm saying is that you can't show the badness of arguments that aren't given in the first place. Gil doesn't argue. He just opines about his magical mystery tour through life, toward his God. ID is just a prop, not something he's arguing for, just something he dresses up in.
So you are confronted with banal faith testimonies. What do you think you can do with that? Can you take that apart and show the badness of the argument? I suggest you cannot. All you can do, is get sucked into the fluff, disputing Gil's "trajectory of the evidence" and other hand-waving nonsense. There's not any badness there to show, it's just an empty vessel, a wild goose chase to see who will follow.
That's fine, and your patience with all that is admirable. And I note you did, and you do work patiently and persistently to funnel your interlocutors back to the real substantive questions.
| Quote |
For instance Abel is clearly much more interested in concluding "ID" than he is in making a reasoned argument. But I don't need to hypothesise why he is making a bad argument in order to demonstrate that he is, and by putting the why to one side it clears the decks of any counter-accusation that I just don't like his argument because it supports ID. |
Fair enough. I'm just started to read through his paper, but will likely just skip to the parts olegt suggested were at the core, so painful is the document to read.
| Quote |
I don't like his argument because his argument makes no sense. |
Yes, but just in the little way I've made into the Abel paper, he's at least wrong. Gil's not even wrong, because Gil has too much much contempt for you, olegt, and everyone else who wants to focus on the merits of his claims to even put anything out there that you can evaluate. He won't deign to put his ideas at risk in front of you -- fuck off, olegt, I'm not about to stoop to you pathetic level of detail..., etc.
Abel is highly confused, clearly, but at least he is saying things we could take apart and show to be wrong, against the available evidence, inconsistent, etc.
|
