CD Sub-Forum

David Bailey said:
I have completely given up on the global warming debate, because it seems like a debate with an ardent religious believer who just quotes religious texts at you and doesn't even engage in debate at all. To be honest, I find the whole subject upsetting, because it has been obvious for years that this subject is some sort of a con - not least when the name of the scare was shifted from 'Global Warming' to 'Climate Change'. So many people (not me) have put enormous effort into exposing the absurdity of CAGW, and yet somehow the media avert their gaze and the whole gravy train keeps rolling.

Getting back to the matter in hand, one person reported a post from that debate, and I took action, so please - anyone who finds abusive contributions over there or anywhere else - press the 'Report' button.

David
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I'm not talking about the substance of the debate, rather I'm talking about the kind of language people use when addressing other members' directly?
 
Arouet said:
I'm talking about serious, detailed discussion here though, getting into the finer details of the papers, working through the various sections with arguments and analysis, asking questions, challenging each other, putting their interpretations to the test and being willing to stick with it. Benefiting from each other's ideas.

That's not everyone's cup of tea - and as you've pointed out, those kind of discussions take a lot of work, and most members either aren't interested or don't have the time for it. That said, you only need a handful who do want to put in that time and effort to have regular, stimulating discussions!
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I'm talking about data collected in research studies - samples, meta-analysis, etc. It's hard to see the value of discussing this sort of thing without working on one's own to understand statistics.

I think people create a fantasy for themselves where they sharpen some kind of illusory "math intuition" but I think one either has mathematical knowledge or does not.

Whether people aren't interested in digging into data, I don't know what they're doing in their personal time so I prefer not to make an ignorant guess.
 
Typoz said:
Mostly he fulfilled the role of killing debate.
It's one thing to hold an imaginary conception of a role, quite another to fulfil it in practice.
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Ah, possibly. He might've gone overboard when I wasn't around last year.

Admittedly I had a soft spot for the guy.
 
Over the years, I have got really sick of people who post in a "playful, are you clever enough to see I am joking" sort of way. That sort of nonsense is rather like back and forth profanity - it just seems to take over and then it bores more reasonable people and drives them away.

I mean imagine reading a maths book and you puzzle over an equation that doesn't look right, and then two pages later it says "I hope you figured out that equation (47) was wrong - I wrote it on April 1!". Once might just be acceptable, but more certainly wouldn't!

David
 
So... In the global warming thread, I flagged a couple of PTEHA's posts on Saturday after I thought he crossed the line. Afterwards, he disappeared so I'm not sure if he got banned or decided to take a break and cool off...

Not sure how people feel about that. Seems like he got his viewpoint across over a dozen or so pages and then just got more and more shrill and repetitious and emotional, and I felt like any valid discourse was being drowned out by a lot of talking without saying much, so when he copied and pasted a bunch of text from others as his own (for what purpose I still don't know - presumably in a mocking way) I flagged it and when he made another post without any substantive argument and said that I and another poster should be locked up for lowering the IQ 100 points, I flagged that as well.

Since he got disappeared, it has been much easier to carry on a polite substantive argument with Steven Wright over actual details and information.

Normally I try to deal with trolling or people who seem a little too big for their britches by being somewhat of a jack-ass right back at them... In a fun lighthearted sort of way... Like with Saiko... I don't know what happened to him, but at one point I tried to either reform him or drive him off but I never flagged him.

Anyway, I don't think we always have to be super polite and completely free of rhetoric, but I think that if things heat up there should at least be some substance to each post otherwise it is just watering down the thread making it harder for anyone to draw any benefit from it.
 
Hurmanetar said:
So... In the global warming thread, I flagged a couple of PTEHA's posts on Saturday after I thought he crossed the line. Afterwards, he disappeared so I'm not sure if he got banned or decided to take a break and cool off...

Not sure how people feel about that. Seems like he got his viewpoint across over a dozen or so pages and then just got more and more shrill and repetitious and emotional, and I felt like any valid discourse was being drowned out by a lot of talking without saying much, so when he copied and pasted a bunch of text from others as his own (for what purpose I still don't know - presumably in a mocking way) I flagged it and when he made another post without any substantive argument and said that I and another poster should be locked up for lowering the IQ 100 points, I flagged that as well.

Since he got disappeared, it has been much easier to carry on a polite substantive argument with Steven Wright over actual details and information.

Normally I try to deal with trolling or people who seem a little too big for their britches by being somewhat of a jack-ass right back at them... In a fun lighthearted sort of way... Like with Saiko... I don't know what happened to him, but at one point I tried to either reform him or drive him off but I never flagged him.

Anyway, I don't think we always have to be super polite and completely free of rhetoric, but I think that if things heat up there should at least be some substance to each post otherwise it is just watering down the thread making it harder for anyone to draw any benefit from it.
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Generally it helps to dial the emotions back down by all participants when the debate becomes overly heated. I have noticed, however, that some who become "shrill and repetitious and emotional" "got dissapeared" and some have not "got dissapeared". I don't know what means, but I've just noticed that.
 
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