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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
It is one of the many ironies of the 2016 presidential campaign that the United States is at war in varying degrees in four different countries in the Middle East and North Africa—Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen—as well as continuing its “longest war” in Afghanistan. All five of these wars now involve ISIS to some degree—ISIS is the central focus of the wars in Iraq, Syria, and Libya—and probably to a degree that seriously threatens the future stability of the MENA region and U.S. strategic interests.
Neither Trump nor Clinton have seriously addressed U.S. policy for any of these five wars, and the Obama Administration has not publically stated its grand strategy for any conflict. For the first time in its national history, the United States may get through a Presidential campaign amidst multiple wars without seriously debating or discussing where any of its wars are going, or what their longer-term impact will be.
If anything, both American politics and the media seem to focus far more on whether or not President Obama failed to keep his 2008 campaign promises to end very different wars. This focus disregards whether or not his legacy involves the ability to actually win any of what are now very different conflicts in a form that will have an outcome that serves U.S. interests and those of our allies.
Source
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On August 20 2016 03:15 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2016 03:06 PassiveAce wrote:
reminds me of how sometimes breitbart will write an article about how shitty BLM is because they found a black dude who's critical of it The oppressive majority has been doing this for pretty much all of human history.
Back in the day of the woman’s suffrage movement, you could find an endless line of opinion pieces from “notable women who disagree with the push for the right to vote for women.” After a while the public gave that role in politics a name and it’s not flattering. Useful Idiot.
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Canada11278 Posts
I actually consider the repeated refrain "we just don't deal with that guy anymore, therefore argument invalid" as a far greater reason to close down the US Politics thread because as I've observed before, people have stopped discussing. You certainly can choose who you do and do not respond to- I after all pick and choose which topics I want to discuss all the time. But by the same measure, if you aren't going to engage, then lay off the 'well x is just x so invalid.' While it can be true, if a poster has become a partisan puppet or a reddit reposter, responding to everything in hackneyed partisan sound bytes and one liners, but then it that case moderation will typically step in, but it's a clear case of the entire thread becoming pulled down by a really terrible and lazy poster incapable or unwilling to self-reflect and re-evaluate.
But if a person is bothering to actually use sources, providing actual excerpts and links to where you can find the rest rather than the typical "watch this two hour video that refutes all your points" *mic drop*, then I take a low view of the casual dismissal of the person. Don't respond if you don't want to respond, but don't declare victory if you don't want to engage.
Now I do think kwizach could afford to make his posts shorter and therefore more manageable to engage with, but I dislike that an attempt at providing sources (synthesized no less rather than "read these 3 books and get back to me, peasant") was met with a "pffff"... unless the sources are really that bad.
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On August 20 2016 02:30 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2016 01:59 LegalLord wrote:On June 24 2016 01:07 xDaunt wrote:On June 24 2016 00:52 LegalLord wrote:On June 24 2016 00:30 silynxer wrote:On June 24 2016 00:09 SolaR- wrote:On June 24 2016 00:04 LegalLord wrote:On June 23 2016 23:24 SolaR- wrote:I wonder if advocating for killing terrorist's families and burning religious books has grouped me under the crazy column?  I mean, I don't personally agree or think that it would work out well, but Trump did have at least one important indirect point that he highlighted when making the argument: sometimes you have to play dirty and accept collateral damage when battling terrorism. There are three historically successful means of fighting against a guerilla army: fight for decades until they ultimately wither under constant pressure, bomb aggressively and indiscriminately so that they cannot hide among the populace, and cut them off from all support structures and bleed them dry. Trump is basically advocating for the second one, and while that does not conform well to modern ideas of human rights, it is probably the most feasible way to fight terrorism in the modern era. Thank you, my point exactly. The logic is there it just depends on the individual and how they prioritize their values. kwizach had a very long post about the state of research into exactly the question whether dealing with terrorism in this way is effective (the post got completely ignored of course). Turns out it is almost universally seen as ineffective or counterproductive and if effective then only in very narrow circumstances that are not met in this situation (of course the outcry of the world would also be a predictable effect with very real negative consequences for the US). Now, you and LegalLord can of course ignore this or declare the research faulty (I can imagine that you both would argue that it's tainted by modern conceptions of human rights and thus biased or something) but the question would remain how you would determine the effectiveness of such a strategy. And how small (or counterproductive) the effect would have to be for you not to support this approach. Maybe in the end it is not that much about the actual effect but more about emotions ("at least we are doing something", "we are showing them", "an eye for an eye"). You are correct that I would have probably ignored a long kwizach post, a stance I take from experience. Between the misrepresentation of opposing positions, misrepresentation of sources, stonewalling, and general unpleasant manner of arguing, I generally don't see much value in reading his posts. They tend to annoy and irritate me even when I actually agree with his main point. If you want to summarize it or offer sources, be my guest - otherwise I'll simply have to treat this as a phantom assertion that "someone else proved you're wrong but I don't want to actually show you where."I'm sure that we could agree that dealing with ethnic strife in the long term is a problem that none of us have a good answer to. In the short term, guerilla movements fail when you destroy their organization. Dissent is one thing, active militants is another. I couldn't have said it better myself. Half of the time he just throws out a wall of sources claiming that they stand for proposition X when there is no realistic possibility of verifying either the claim that the source actually stands for that proposition, or that the source cited is sound/unimpeachable. I did take the time to look at some of the stuff that he posted in his most recent wall of bullshit post, and I found it highly wanting. Points were misrepresented, sources were over-cited, and some of the sources were just ridiculous. If I had several free days, I could have posted a meaningful response if I was so inclined. And I'm not. The only result would be the complete shitting up of this thread with stuff that basically no one cares about. Long story short, there's a reason why kwizach is ignored by many of the veteran posters in this thread. Continues to be proven valid. Though I suppose it's fair to add "unable to avoid spinning a criticism into a personal vendetta" to the list of reasons that I don't waste my time. So, in other words, you're too lazy to put in the effort to refute his thoroughly-sourced arguing points. And I find it really ironic that Templar cites xDaunt as a quality poster and that xDaunt himself claims that we ignore kwizach when xDaunt is easily one of the worst shit posters here. He repeatedly condones genocide, justifies disenfranchising a huge segment of the population by calling them stupid, repeatedly personally attacks posters, and doesn't have a shred of intellectual honesty as he consistently strawmans his opponents, or just ignores them when he's soundly defeated.Perhaps instead of just relying on xDaunt's lazy response, you should put a little effort into your own.
The irony is striking.
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Trump visiting LA seems to be a rather odd photo op attempt.
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On August 20 2016 03:01 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
Thoughts?
Lol this same video has been circling around for a month now. And was already posted in this thread already iirc.
When people start reposting shit like its new you know there are running out of stuff.
And it was the same point not all of people of color agree on things, that must be really hard to understand at this point. 1 person is indicative of nothing. He is well within his right to believe what he believes. End of story.
Also thoughts?>
http://splitsider.com/2016/08/jordan-klepper-quizzes-trump-supporters-with-the-extreme-vetting-ideology-test-on-the-daily-show/
On August 20 2016 03:03 Doodsmack wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2016 02:29 LegalLord wrote:On August 20 2016 02:18 Mercy13 wrote:On August 20 2016 01:59 LegalLord wrote:On June 24 2016 01:07 xDaunt wrote:On June 24 2016 00:52 LegalLord wrote:On June 24 2016 00:30 silynxer wrote:On June 24 2016 00:09 SolaR- wrote:On June 24 2016 00:04 LegalLord wrote:On June 23 2016 23:24 SolaR- wrote:I wonder if advocating for killing terrorist's families and burning religious books has grouped me under the crazy column? I mean, I don't personally agree or think that it would work out well, but Trump did have at least one important indirect point that he highlighted when making the argument: sometimes you have to play dirty and accept collateral damage when battling terrorism. There are three historically successful means of fighting against a guerilla army: fight for decades until they ultimately wither under constant pressure, bomb aggressively and indiscriminately so that they cannot hide among the populace, and cut them off from all support structures and bleed them dry. Trump is basically advocating for the second one, and while that does not conform well to modern ideas of human rights, it is probably the most feasible way to fight terrorism in the modern era. Thank you, my point exactly. The logic is there it just depends on the individual and how they prioritize their values. kwizach had a very long post about the state of research into exactly the question whether dealing with terrorism in this way is effective (the post got completely ignored of course). Turns out it is almost universally seen as ineffective or counterproductive and if effective then only in very narrow circumstances that are not met in this situation (of course the outcry of the world would also be a predictable effect with very real negative consequences for the US). Now, you and LegalLord can of course ignore this or declare the research faulty (I can imagine that you both would argue that it's tainted by modern conceptions of human rights and thus biased or something) but the question would remain how you would determine the effectiveness of such a strategy. And how small (or counterproductive) the effect would have to be for you not to support this approach. Maybe in the end it is not that much about the actual effect but more about emotions ("at least we are doing something", "we are showing them", "an eye for an eye"). You are correct that I would have probably ignored a long kwizach post, a stance I take from experience. Between the misrepresentation of opposing positions, misrepresentation of sources, stonewalling, and general unpleasant manner of arguing, I generally don't see much value in reading his posts. They tend to annoy and irritate me even when I actually agree with his main point. If you want to summarize it or offer sources, be my guest - otherwise I'll simply have to treat this as a phantom assertion that "someone else proved you're wrong but I don't want to actually show you where."I'm sure that we could agree that dealing with ethnic strife in the long term is a problem that none of us have a good answer to. In the short term, guerilla movements fail when you destroy their organization. Dissent is one thing, active militants is another. I couldn't have said it better myself. Half of the time he just throws out a wall of sources claiming that they stand for proposition X when there is no realistic possibility of verifying either the claim that the source actually stands for that proposition, or that the source cited is sound/unimpeachable. I did take the time to look at some of the stuff that he posted in his most recent wall of bullshit post, and I found it highly wanting. Points were misrepresented, sources were over-cited, and some of the sources were just ridiculous. If I had several free days, I could have posted a meaningful response if I was so inclined. And I'm not. The only result would be the complete shitting up of this thread with stuff that basically no one cares about. Long story short, there's a reason why kwizach is ignored by many of the veteran posters in this thread. Continues to be proven valid. Though I suppose it's fair to add "unable to avoid spinning a criticism into a personal vendetta" to the list of reasons that I don't waste my time. It's okay if you're too lazy to put the same amount of effort into responding to Kwizach's posts as he does writing them, most posters are. But don't pretend this is his failing. I found the post on the effectiveness of targeting civilians to be very persuasive, you should read it. I've read his posts plenty, and I've previously spent time looking through his sources and giving him a full response. The result is the same: long-winded responses with plenty of questionable assumptions, misrepresentation of sources and the inability to acknowledge as much, and the inability to avoid spending quite a long time complaining about people ignoring him. At some point you have to realize that there is really nothing to be proven by discussion with him (participation in this thread is fully voluntary and doesn't influence anything in the real world) and it's not worth wasting the time to do so. You are free to agree with him - I sometimes agree with the general point he makes as well. However, discussions involving kwizach on any topic always inevitably devolve into "shitting up the thread with stuff that basically nobody cares about." No thanks. Also let's not continue this line of discussion since it is starting to be off-topic. Having a history of arguing with kwizach and not wanting to do it anymore is one thing, but don't claim that gives you credence in invalidating, without actually addressing, any specific recent post he has made. Because that is what you're doing when you say "Continues to be proven valid" and "otherwise I'll simply have to treat this as a phantom assertion that "someone else proved you're wrong but I don't want to actually show you where".
If its any consolation his long as post interested me and I went and checked a bunch of stuff.
I didnt find anything inconsistent or overcited there. Unless people can actually make the same effort to go and refute and quote the overcitations or inconsistencies and provide opposing facts the dismissal to the effort he put in is an embarrassing indictment of a Trump supporter.
Its like when you ask Trump how shit will get done and he will just say do it. Same here shit here. "TLDR but your wrong."
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falling ->
I'd say the problem is that there's some bad posters who aren't just doing one liners; but they do make long cited posts, which are then shown to be unsound repeatedly. They rely on terrible sources; and they keep using them over and over; with some things it's easier to avoid (i.e. certain known semi-news sites), with others it's less immediately obvious. Sometimes they fail ot have a good grasp on basics of reality, and never listen no matter how many times things are demonstrated to be to the contrary.
After awhile it just becomes clear that no useful discussion is possible; as they're clearly not interested in counter-evidence, and what they provide is never any good.
likewise people can be uselessly horribly partisan.
in a years long running thread, it's quite feasible to get to the point where it's clear that some people are simply not worth talking to; because there's such a long history of evidence to assess their average quality.
it also doesn't help imho that people are allowed a lot of slack to semi-shitpost, which makes people combative and less likely to usefully engage, and makes people just not worth dealing with.
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On August 20 2016 03:17 GGTeMpLaR wrote:Show nested quote +It is one of the many ironies of the 2016 presidential campaign that the United States is at war in varying degrees in four different countries in the Middle East and North Africa—Iraq, Syria, Libya, and Yemen—as well as continuing its “longest war” in Afghanistan. All five of these wars now involve ISIS to some degree—ISIS is the central focus of the wars in Iraq, Syria, and Libya—and probably to a degree that seriously threatens the future stability of the MENA region and U.S. strategic interests.
Neither Trump nor Clinton have seriously addressed U.S. policy for any of these five wars, and the Obama Administration has not publically stated its grand strategy for any conflict. For the first time in its national history, the United States may get through a Presidential campaign amidst multiple wars without seriously debating or discussing where any of its wars are going, or what their longer-term impact will be.
If anything, both American politics and the media seem to focus far more on whether or not President Obama failed to keep his 2008 campaign promises to end very different wars. This focus disregards whether or not his legacy involves the ability to actually win any of what are now very different conflicts in a form that will have an outcome that serves U.S. interests and those of our allies. Source
Just like we have drones defending why a ransom isn't ransom, we have the same drones saying why Obama's handling isn't his fault or is in despite of the best expert policy, and why Hillary is most capable of fixing the trouble. Expect to see a rise in reporting if Trump is elected.
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And Danglars shows up to point out exactly why this thread has gone to shit. We had a pretty reasonable discussion yesterday about the problems with that deal and maybe the reasons why it was handled the way it was. But forget that, lets just call people drones.
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Canada11278 Posts
zlefin
That is true- there is such thing overwhelming with bad sources (I forget the term), but I never saw evidence that it was the case with the post in question. However, I'm not really interested in seeing it hashed out now because the thread has moved on.
I do think the inability to adapt your argument in the face of counter-evidence to be particularly bad- another example of how people aren't discussing. Repeat assertion, refute again, repeat assertion with no acknowledgement of refutation, refute again, repeat assertion with no acknowledgement of refutation is a deadly cycle for interesting discussions.
edit
(Going a back aways in the thread, looking for context... I see a former poster such as Hannahbelle as perfect example of a poster would never deal with counter arguments, but continued to argue from a fortress of ignorance.)
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On August 20 2016 04:25 Plansix wrote:
And Danglars shows up to point out exactly why this thread has gone to shit. We had a pretty reasonable discussion yesterday about the problems with that deal and maybe the reasons why it was handled the way it was. But forget that, lets just call people drones.
Do you honestly believe you are less part of the reason than Danglars?
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Norway28558 Posts
I totally understand that discussing with kwizach might demand more effort than people are willing to invest into their foruming, mostly because his posts are very thorough and source-heavy, but some of the attacks on him are ridiculous. While I enjoy throwing opinions at each other as much as the next guy, I do opine that opinions with a foundation in either logic or statistics or academic work are better than ones based chiefly around gut feeling. I'm certainly not going to insist that other posters have to start citing sources or write as elaborate posts as he does, I value both forum diversity and activity highly, but I also certainly value a kwizach post more than the average post from the average poster. If you have disagreed with his logical conclusions or world view or think he misrepresents a source, that's fair enough - you are all encouraged to be specific in your addressal of the arguments he makes and sources he cites - but don't vocally dismiss him on a generic basis for being too source heavy or for in the past having posted sources where you disagreed with his interpretation of said sources.
Kwizach's sourcing is exactly the kind we want to encourage anyway, he normally goes through quite some effort to avoid paywalls even if he has even better sources that are more exclusive, he doesn't post youtube videos, but actually links to specific, searchable text which is easy to double check.
Aside from that, the past couple pages have been a bit too aggressive. Please try to tone it down. We're not children and it is natural for political discussions to be heated, but I would really like to see more dissecting of arguments or opinions rather than dismissals of people. The latter is not fruitful at all.
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falling ->
agreed on the problem of repeat assertions. i've seen it a number of times, though in some cases at least it led to one guy going too far and getting banned for something else.
There may not have been such an issue with the post in quesotin, but since the poster has a looooong history, people may simply know and/or remember/believe that to be the case, that it's simply not worth engaging.
I'm not sure if really tight moderation would work in a topic of this nature, though it works elsewhere on the site. and it's certainly doable in principle, though a lot of work.
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On August 20 2016 04:35 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I totally understand that discussing with kwizach might demand more effort than people are willing to invest into their foruming, mostly because his posts are very thorough and source-heavy, but some of the attacks on him are ridiculous. While I enjoy throwing opinions at each other as much as the next guy, I do opine that opinions with a foundation in either logic or statistics or academic work are better than ones based chiefly around gut feeling. I'm certainly not going to insist that other posters have to start citing sources or write as elaborate posts as he does, I value both forum diversity and activity highly, but I also certainly value a kwizach post more than the average post from the average poster. If you have disagreed with his logical conclusions or world view or think he misrepresents a source, that's fair enough - you are all encouraged to be specific in your addressal of the arguments he makes and sources he cites - but don't vocally dismiss him on a generic basis for being too source heavy or for in the past having posted sources where you disagreed with his interpretation of said sources.
Kwizach's sourcing is exactly the kind we want to encourage anyway, he normally goes through quite some effort to avoid paywalls even if he has even better sources that are more exclusive, he doesn't post youtube videos, but actually links to specific, searchable text which is easy to double check.
Aside from that, the past couple pages have been a bit too aggressive. Please try to tone it down. We're not children and it is natural for political discussions to be heated, but I would really like to see more dissecting of arguments or opinions rather than dismissals of people. The latter is not fruitful at all.
In principle, I feel similarly. In practice, I'm torn because kwizach's decision to resurrect a 2 month old argument is pretty representative of why he pisses some people off, and I can't really condone that petty behavior, even if I do enjoy reading his posts.
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Norway28558 Posts
On August 20 2016 04:18 zlefin wrote:
falling ->
I'd say the problem is that there's some bad posters who aren't just doing one liners; but they do make long cited posts, which are then shown to be unsound repeatedly. They rely on terrible sources; and they keep using them over and over; with some things it's easier to avoid (i.e. certain known semi-news sites), with others it's less immediately obvious. Sometimes they fail ot have a good grasp on basics of reality, and never listen no matter how many times things are demonstrated to be to the contrary.
After awhile it just becomes clear that no useful discussion is possible; as they're clearly not interested in counter-evidence, and what they provide is never any good.
likewise people can be uselessly horribly partisan.
in a years long running thread, it's quite feasible to get to the point where it's clear that some people are simply not worth talking to; because there's such a long history of evidence to assess their average quality.
it also doesn't help imho that people are allowed a lot of slack to semi-shitpost, which makes people combative and less likely to usefully engage, and makes people just not worth dealing with.
One important thing to keep in mind when discussing on the internet is that very, very few people will actually adjust their opinion during a discussion. It normally takes a combination of a special type of person coupled with an extraordinarily persuasive argument for someone to actually change an opinion he felt strongly enough about to articulate an argument for, especially online. But many, many other people read the exchanges, these are the people you are really trying to reach. I've hardly ever reverted an opinion because of an internet argument I've been involved in, and I've rarely even made significant adjustments, but I have on many occasions formed opinions on subjects where I was initially neutral because of persuasive arguments. And this is much more likely to happen following a long, elaborate post containing sources.
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Norway28558 Posts
On August 20 2016 04:43 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2016 04:35 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I totally understand that discussing with kwizach might demand more effort than people are willing to invest into their foruming, mostly because his posts are very thorough and source-heavy, but some of the attacks on him are ridiculous. While I enjoy throwing opinions at each other as much as the next guy, I do opine that opinions with a foundation in either logic or statistics or academic work are better than ones based chiefly around gut feeling. I'm certainly not going to insist that other posters have to start citing sources or write as elaborate posts as he does, I value both forum diversity and activity highly, but I also certainly value a kwizach post more than the average post from the average poster. If you have disagreed with his logical conclusions or world view or think he misrepresents a source, that's fair enough - you are all encouraged to be specific in your addressal of the arguments he makes and sources he cites - but don't vocally dismiss him on a generic basis for being too source heavy or for in the past having posted sources where you disagreed with his interpretation of said sources.
Kwizach's sourcing is exactly the kind we want to encourage anyway, he normally goes through quite some effort to avoid paywalls even if he has even better sources that are more exclusive, he doesn't post youtube videos, but actually links to specific, searchable text which is easy to double check.
Aside from that, the past couple pages have been a bit too aggressive. Please try to tone it down. We're not children and it is natural for political discussions to be heated, but I would really like to see more dissecting of arguments or opinions rather than dismissals of people. The latter is not fruitful at all. In principle, I feel similarly. In practice, I'm torn because kwizach's decision to resurrect a 2 month old argument is pretty representative of why he pisses some people off, and I can't really condone that petty behavior, even if I do enjoy reading his posts.
I do realize that I contributed myself by posting this, but I would like to refrain from discussing kwizach's personality any longer. My final statement I guess is that I understand where you are coming from - but kwizach specifically replied to two posters that had, during his 2 month hiatus, been 'talking shit' about him.
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On August 20 2016 04:43 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2016 04:35 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I totally understand that discussing with kwizach might demand more effort than people are willing to invest into their foruming, mostly because his posts are very thorough and source-heavy, but some of the attacks on him are ridiculous. While I enjoy throwing opinions at each other as much as the next guy, I do opine that opinions with a foundation in either logic or statistics or academic work are better than ones based chiefly around gut feeling. I'm certainly not going to insist that other posters have to start citing sources or write as elaborate posts as he does, I value both forum diversity and activity highly, but I also certainly value a kwizach post more than the average post from the average poster. If you have disagreed with his logical conclusions or world view or think he misrepresents a source, that's fair enough - you are all encouraged to be specific in your addressal of the arguments he makes and sources he cites - but don't vocally dismiss him on a generic basis for being too source heavy or for in the past having posted sources where you disagreed with his interpretation of said sources.
Kwizach's sourcing is exactly the kind we want to encourage anyway, he normally goes through quite some effort to avoid paywalls even if he has even better sources that are more exclusive, he doesn't post youtube videos, but actually links to specific, searchable text which is easy to double check.
Aside from that, the past couple pages have been a bit too aggressive. Please try to tone it down. We're not children and it is natural for political discussions to be heated, but I would really like to see more dissecting of arguments or opinions rather than dismissals of people. The latter is not fruitful at all. In principle, I feel similarly. In practice, I'm torn because kwizach's decision to resurrect a 2 month old argument is pretty representative of why he pisses some people off, and I can't really condone that petty behavior, even if I do enjoy reading his posts.
to be fair: most of the topics in this thread are recurring.... so it is not the resurrecting at all but the resurrecting at will, when one party has the time to invest the effort, which made this case problematic to some...
but i consider that a valid metric to decide participation in a voluntary forum of discurse
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Canada11278 Posts
There may not have been such an issue with the post in quesotin, but since the poster has a looooong history, people may simply know and/or remember/believe that to be the case, that it's simply not worth engaging.
A long history, yes... but I've been skimming a bit just to get a flavour for the type of posting (57 pages, wow some of you guys post a lot)... the pace picked up substantially in this last election, most of it regarding the political races Sanders v Clinton or anti-Trump, there's some sexual identity stuff back in 2013/14 or so. But I didn't see a lot in the foreign policy front that I could see that would warrant an auto-dismissal due to back and forth fights, but maybe I just missed it- I really can't be bothered to make a thorough investigation.
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On August 20 2016 04:43 TheYango wrote:Show nested quote +On August 20 2016 04:35 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I totally understand that discussing with kwizach might demand more effort than people are willing to invest into their foruming, mostly because his posts are very thorough and source-heavy, but some of the attacks on him are ridiculous. While I enjoy throwing opinions at each other as much as the next guy, I do opine that opinions with a foundation in either logic or statistics or academic work are better than ones based chiefly around gut feeling. I'm certainly not going to insist that other posters have to start citing sources or write as elaborate posts as he does, I value both forum diversity and activity highly, but I also certainly value a kwizach post more than the average post from the average poster. If you have disagreed with his logical conclusions or world view or think he misrepresents a source, that's fair enough - you are all encouraged to be specific in your addressal of the arguments he makes and sources he cites - but don't vocally dismiss him on a generic basis for being too source heavy or for in the past having posted sources where you disagreed with his interpretation of said sources.
Kwizach's sourcing is exactly the kind we want to encourage anyway, he normally goes through quite some effort to avoid paywalls even if he has even better sources that are more exclusive, he doesn't post youtube videos, but actually links to specific, searchable text which is easy to double check.
Aside from that, the past couple pages have been a bit too aggressive. Please try to tone it down. We're not children and it is natural for political discussions to be heated, but I would really like to see more dissecting of arguments or opinions rather than dismissals of people. The latter is not fruitful at all. In principle, I feel similarly. In practice, I'm torn because kwizach's decision to resurrect a 2 month old argument is pretty representative of why he pisses some people off, and I can't really condone that petty behavior, even if I do enjoy reading his posts.
To be fair, he did not bring it back up on his own. Several posters asked where he had gone last week and some folks decided discuss the quality of his posting and argument at that time. But it did lead to some pettiness.
Edit: Drone covered it.
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EPT
