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#152 Mar 04 2014 at 8:17 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
I didn't even notice, so that's a bit strange to say.
Please continue telling us how the truth is being hidden and free speech is being attacked by the liberal agenda.

Did you blame cliques yet?
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#153 Mar 04 2014 at 8:18 PM Rating: Excellent
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I didn't realize being rated down was being tarred and feathered. You're saying at the same time that it doesn't matter and that you don't notice, and in the next comparing it to being tarred and feathered.

Edited, Mar 4th 2014 8:18pm by Xsarus
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#154 Mar 04 2014 at 8:26 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
I didn't even notice, so that's a bit strange to say.

When it was pointed out, you jumped to cry about mean ole liberals though so it's not all that strange after all.

Your opinions on what is and isn't "free speech" were good for a laugh though so thanks.
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#155 Mar 04 2014 at 8:46 PM Rating: Decent
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Gbaji wrote:
I disagree. I've never liked (or used) the rating system precisely because IMO it's far more likely to be about popular versus unpopular speech than it is about useful versus non-useful (which is the actual stated purpose).


You're conflating two different points. The fact that it's all about popularity doesn't negate your "freedom of speech".
#156 Mar 04 2014 at 8:53 PM Rating: Default
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Sir Xsarus wrote:
The point is that people near minimum wage are affected by minimum wage increases. The closer you are to this, the more you are affected. Your argument was saying that only people making exactly minimum wage are affected, which is ridiculous. Employers aren't paying people slightly over minimum wage to make a statistical point either, they pay slightly over minimum wage to try and keep employees slightly longer at sub standard wages. Amusing straw man though.


Huh? I never said that only those "at minimum wage" are affected. In fact, I've argued repeatedly that everyone is affected to some degree, and those most affected are those closest to minimum wage. I've said repeatedly that everyone earning a wage between the initial minimum and the new one is affected. I just disagree that this is necessarily "good" for all of them. I've also said that those earning just over the new minimum will be affected as well (and for them *always* in the negative).

And no. Employers aren't paying people "slightly over minimum wage" for any specific reason at all. As I just pointed out, there is no massive clumping of wages at any specific level like we'd expect to see if the "pay them just a bit over the minimum" was such a common occurrence. People tend to start at low waged, and then improve over time. And the statistics bear that out. The case of some poor guy never earning more than a tiny bit over minimum wage for his entire life is exceptionally rare, and generally has nothing to do with evil bosses and a lot more to do with bad work habits (and often criminal habits) of the employee.

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that's fair, lets say full time then. 40-60 hours a week. The rest of your sentence is correct, except that you're painting the line where someone gets food stamps as arbitrary which it's not.


Ok. Then I'm not sure what the point is. And I didn't say it's always arbitrary, but it can be arbitrary. In theory, the dollar values at which we decide that a family of X requires Y amount of food stamps is based on calculations of spending/costs/etc. But there's nothing to prevent those in charge from simply deciding to raise the dollar amounts. And if you make the justification circular, then there's even less reason not to. If your definition of "poor" is "anyone who receives food stamps", then if I want to make it seem like more people are poor in order to justify whatever socio-economic policy I want to implement (like raising minimum wage, increasing welfare levels, or whatever), then all I have to do is raise the dollar level at which food stamps are granted, right?

That's what I was talking about.

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It's not circular at all. No one is picking a number for food stamps in order to somehow justify food stamps, that's another straw man.


They aren't *now*. If we implemented the proposed system of determining "poverty" based on the dollar value of food stamp eligibility, then that would change. Increase the dollar value, and you increase the number of poor people. And if you tie other welfare systems to this, you increase the number of people "in need", even if they aren't really in need.

Do I need to go dig out all those food stamp studies which more or less concluded that food insecurity not only wasn't correlated with whether food stamps were received, but in fact had a negative correlation (ie: people in the same income ranges who received food stamps were more likely to suffer food insecurity than those who weren't)? Cause that's always a hoot! And that's with the current, non-circular method.

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The number is picked using the standard of how much money is needed to support yourself and your dependents with lodging and food.


Yes. Now. You apparently missed the part where I said "if we make this change, then this result will occur".

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If you come up short, food stamps are there to help compensate. This criteria is also a good point at which to say, if you're working full time, you shouldn't be below this number. There is no circularity at all, you determine a number that people need to live, and move forward to multiple conclusions, one is that people who make less need food stamps. The other is that someone working full time should be over this line.


Sure, sure. But that's missing the whole point. I responded to a proposal that we tie minimum wage to qualification for food stamps. So if you "worked as much as you could" and still qualified for food stamps, then whatever wage you earned wasn't enough, so minimum wage should be raised.

The problem is that this gives those who want to raise the minimum wage a reason to do so by raising the dollar amount at which you qualify for food stamps. It'll no longer be based on some assessment of the financial needs with regard to food security, but subject to political manipulation. Best not to do that in the first place.

Um... And it also misses a whole chunk of the issue. Not everyone who earns a given hourly wage is supporting the same number of mouths. So while $7.50/hour is certainly not enough to raise a family of four on, it's probably more than enough for a high school kid still living at home. You're conflating two very different things by trying to tie hourly wages to food stamp need. And IMO, you're going to cause counter productive results if you try. As I've stated repeatedly, raising minimum wage overwhelmingly increases the wages for those who need them least (high school and college kids who are receiving financial support and don't need high wages), at the expense overwhelmingly of those who most need their wages (single working class parents).

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The rest of your rhetoric is just that. I think a company needs to be responsible to it's employees. Taking advantage of them to squeeze out the maximum profit is unethical. Profit is fine, but there should be a responsibility to ensure that someone who works for you full time, especially for an extended period of time is able to take care of themselves, which is in the lower tier of our economy, often not the case. Your argument has merit, but falls apart when a company has too much power and unbalances the relationship. At such a point, when they can start taking advantage of the employees, there needs to be laws that step in and prevent this from happening. This has been so clearly illustrated over and over again, that the concept that labour laws somehow hurt the workers in the long run is ludicrous.


I disagree. I think that trying to impose a system where employers are forced to pay people more than their labor is actually worth is unethical. I think it not only is unfair to the employers, but also hurts the employees in the long run. It creates a false 'floor' for labor that is higher than it should be, which in turn eliminates what should be a smooth gradual upward mobility slope and turns it into a hard wall. The result is a lot of earnings bang for little labor buck at the bottom end, with a hard and steep climb past that point which most people wont bother doing.

If you start at say $5/hour, and then you earn every dollar above that, you will tend to expend the effort to improve the value of your labor as you go along. This will tend to continue for most people well past the point of whatever minimum "living wage" we might have our government set (let's say $15/hour). You gain something every step of the way, so you continue to work hard all the way through your career.

if instead, you just set the minimum at $15/hour, one of two things happen. Either inflation occurs, and $15/hour becomes the new $5/hour, and there's no benefit at all except some disruption of prices and elimination of wealth *or* it doesn't occur (which is the entire assumption behind even attempting it), and you end out with people earning $15/hour just for showing up to work. But, assuming no inflation, employers are not going to pay anything above that except for employees who's labor actually justifies the higher wage. So you're now earning $15/hour while only providing $5/hour worth of labor. You have to increase the value of your labor by $10/hour before you'll see one cent of a raise.

It creates a wall blocking upward mobility at/from the low end. Most people in a "living wage" economy will simply sit at that minimum living wage level and never advance. It's a trap. And it's unfair.
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#157 Mar 04 2014 at 8:55 PM Rating: Decent
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I just clicked the red arrow because jesus christ man, this a forum not a ******* novel.
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#158 Mar 04 2014 at 8:58 PM Rating: Decent
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Almalieque wrote:
Gbaji wrote:
I disagree. I've never liked (or used) the rating system precisely because IMO it's far more likely to be about popular versus unpopular speech than it is about useful versus non-useful (which is the actual stated purpose).


You're conflating two different points. The fact that it's all about popularity doesn't negate your "freedom of speech".


I didn't say it "negated" my freedom of speech. Want to try again? This time without the absurd absolutist straw man?
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#159 Mar 04 2014 at 9:06 PM Rating: Default
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gbaji wrote:
Almalieque wrote:
Gbaji wrote:
I disagree. I've never liked (or used) the rating system precisely because IMO it's far more likely to be about popular versus unpopular speech than it is about useful versus non-useful (which is the actual stated purpose).


You're conflating two different points. The fact that it's all about popularity doesn't negate your "freedom of speech".


I didn't say it "negated" my freedom of speech. Want to try again? This time without the absurd absolutist straw man?


Gbaji wrote:

And that's entirely about suppressing free speech.


http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/negate wrote:
to cause to be ineffective or invalid

#160 Mar 04 2014 at 9:07 PM Rating: Default
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Stalker rdmcandie wrote:
I just clicked the red arrow because jesus christ man, this a forum not a @#%^ing novel.


Um.. Ok. Short version:

The best way to maximize the "haves versus have-nots" effect in a society is to increase minimum wage to a "living wage" level. Bonus points if you also add things like subsidized housing, food, transportation, etc to those near that living wage level. You increase the amount of effort required to advance beyond that living wage level at the same time you decrease the motivation and reward for doing so.

Get it?
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#161 Mar 04 2014 at 9:08 PM Rating: Good
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See? Why can't you do that with the rest of your hilariously erroneous opinions?
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#162 Mar 04 2014 at 9:23 PM Rating: Default
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Almalieque wrote:
gbaji wrote:
Almalieque wrote:
Gbaji wrote:
I disagree. I've never liked (or used) the rating system precisely because IMO it's far more likely to be about popular versus unpopular speech than it is about useful versus non-useful (which is the actual stated purpose).


You're conflating two different points. The fact that it's all about popularity doesn't negate your "freedom of speech".


I didn't say it "negated" my freedom of speech. Want to try again? This time without the absurd absolutist straw man?


Gbaji wrote:

And that's entirely about suppressing free speech.


http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/negate wrote:
to cause to be ineffective or invalid



I'm not getting into a definition battle with you.

I never said that "my freedom of speech" was gone. I said that by continually rating down posts you disagree with (not just mine), you create an environment that is hostile to any speech that is unpopular, and thus will suppress "free speech", not just by me, but by anyone who contemplates posting something which the majority may not like. It's not an absolute, but a trend.

And as I've stated repeatedly, this is the entire point of rating down unpopular views. Why do you think people rate posts in this forum? Seriously. The entire point is to try to drive away speech that isn't liked. Now when the criteria for that is "spammers and gold sellers", that's one thing. But when it's "opinions I don't like", it's something entirely different. Hence my comment. There are far far too many people on this forum who react to opinions they don't like by trying to make them just go away rather than engaging them in conversation.

Personally, I tend to take that as an admission that on some level they know that the opinion has merit, they don't know how to respond to it, so they lash out at it instead. I always find it interesting that the posts I make that I think of as the ones making the strongest arguments tend to be the ones most likely to be rated down, often with little or no posted response. People will jump on any post I make that presents a weak argument (or even one where I just make a mistake writing out what I"m trying to say), almost gleefully in fact. But they tend to not respond with a post when I make strong points. And yeah, that speaks volumes to me about the reasons why people rate my posts.
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#163 Mar 04 2014 at 9:25 PM Rating: Default
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lolgaxe wrote:
See? Why can't you do that with the rest of your hilariously erroneous opinions?


I would. You honestly haven't noticed that I usually start out a topic with short declarative posts, then people say "But gbaji, what about this and that and this other thing", then my posts get longer and longer as I have to provide more detailed explanations for what I'm saying. Then I get complaints about the length of my posts, which I find ironic.
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#164 Mar 04 2014 at 9:27 PM Rating: Good
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Why are we still talking about gbaji's karma e-peen? Apparently someone has already kissed it and put a band-aid on it.

Also, since when does freedom of speech apply to the internet? Red arrows are not going to stop anyone from expressing themselves here, anyway, unless it has caused such undue mental anguish that they cannot bring themselves to relive that kind of torment.

Are you going to rage-quit gbaji? That'd be a real shame. Aside from the occasional outbursts of "DUDE!" you are a great deal less of a crybaby than any of your like-minded fellows on the internet. I mean, what would someone here have to say before you're threatening to shoot them or typing in all capital letters about how they're all going to burn in Hell?

Edited, Mar 5th 2014 6:28am by Kuwoobie
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#165 Mar 04 2014 at 9:37 PM Rating: Good
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I guess I'm supposed to pretend that most of the additional "new explanations" aren't rhetorical questions, bad analogies, and tons of repetition?

Edited, Mar 4th 2014 11:14pm by lolgaxe
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#166 Mar 04 2014 at 10:13 PM Rating: Good
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Stalker rdmcandie wrote:
Hey guys here is 3 paragraphs where I try to legitimize some dude earning 1000X the rate of his employees. Even though he can take 10x the pay and still live comfortably. 70$.hr@60hrs/wk(-2wk holiday) = 210K Personal Take home (before taxes).

Not a shabby chunk of money. Unless you a greedy @#%^.


210k is pretty low, and rapid shock would cause a brain drain. Much better to slowly taper via tax reforms.
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#167 Mar 04 2014 at 10:23 PM Rating: Default
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Kuwoobie wrote:
Also, since when does freedom of speech apply to the internet? Red arrows are not going to stop anyone from expressing themselves here, anyway, unless it has caused such undue mental anguish that they cannot bring themselves to relive that kind of torment.


I'm talking about the principle of free speech, not the legal/constitutional "freedom of speech". Respecting other people's opinions, even when you disagree with them, is a core part of that principle. This doesn't require you sitting quietly by while someone says something you don't like, but on an internet forum, we're all free to post what we want, right? So if you disagree, you're free to express your disagreement.

I just personally feel that rating posts is a poor way of doing this. It's more of a philosophical thing, and honestly has nothing to do with how people rate or don't rate me. I never used the forum rating tool even way back when I mostly posted on the EQ forum, and was well thought of as a good source of knowledge about the game. There's a reason why my title is "encyclopedia", and I used to have a green name before I shifted to almost exclusively posting about politics and whatnot.

I've always felt that the problem with any forum rating system is that it enforces cliques. Rates become less about whether people post interesting and thought provoking ideas, or useful information, and more about whether they post things that aligns with the majority of the forum. It's an interesting study in forum group dynamics really. I'm honestly more amused by how much weight other people place on such things. And, as usual, I'm more than willing to engage in discussion on any subject, even this one.


Quote:
Are you going to rage-quit gbaji? That'd be a real shame. Aside from the occasional outbursts of "DUDE!" you are a great deal less of a crybaby than any of your like-minded fellows on the internet. I mean, what would someone here have to say before you're threatening to shoot them or typing in all capital letters about how they're all going to burn in Hell?


Lol! You're kidding, right? Of course not. As I've said repeatedly, this isn't about me. It's about you guys. I treat this forum as somewhere to just go and practice different positions on different issues to see how people respond, what arguments they use, and to be completely honest, at what point they'll abandon arguments and just resort to name calling. Doesn't mean that I just make up positions to be contrary or something (although I'll admit I have on occasion picked purely devils advocate positions when I don't personally care). I really do think that a gap between rich and poor is a sign of a healthy economy with lots of upward mobility and opportunity and *not* a bad thing. I really do think that gay couples shouldn't qualify for marriage benefits. I really do think that socialized medicine is a bad idea. Those are my positions (along with a host of others).

But honestly, my goal on this forum is less about arguing my positions as trying to get people to recognize and use good arguments versus bad ones. It's something I see far too much of. I'll eternally challenge arguments of the "anyone who doesn't agree with me is bad" form. So there's that. And if the pattern of ratedowns I get is any indication (while we're on the subject anyway), people care less about me challenging their positions on issues as they do with me challenging why they hold those positions. And that's something I find very very interesting.
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#168 Mar 04 2014 at 10:29 PM Rating: Excellent
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I really do think that a gap between rich and poor is a sign of a healthy economy with lots of upward mobility and opportunity and *not* a bad thing.
you realize that this is not backed up by any example in reality ever right? Just saying.

Obviously there is always a gap between a rich person and poor person by definition. My point would be when that gap grows, especially to extremes as it is doing right now, that is not a sign of a health economy at all.

Edited, Mar 4th 2014 10:31pm by Xsarus
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#169 Mar 04 2014 at 10:35 PM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
There's a reason why my title is "encyclopedia",
For spreading outdated and obsolete information?
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#170 Mar 04 2014 at 10:42 PM Rating: Default
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Timelordwho wrote:
Stalker rdmcandie wrote:
Hey guys here is 3 paragraphs where I try to legitimize some dude earning 1000X the rate of his employees. Even though he can take 10x the pay and still live comfortably. 70$.hr@60hrs/wk(-2wk holiday) = 210K Personal Take home (before taxes).

Not a shabby chunk of money. Unless you a greedy @#%^.


210k is pretty low, and rapid shock would cause a brain drain. Much better to slowly taper via tax reforms.


Oh yeah. And, as I started to mention initially, what do you think the rich people do with that money?

The higher someone's earnings, the greater the percentage of those earnings they will spend investing versus consuming. Put another way, let's imagine we decide to reduce someone's earnings from say $1m/year to $800k/year, and distribute that $200k difference by increasing 20 employees salaries from $25k/year to $35k/year (an example which was mentioned earlier). What is the result?

That $200k in the hands of the employer would have been invested, either back into his own business, or into some other business via the market. We can argue about the direct effect of that specific money, but on the whole, it's that money that creates new jobs, allows people to get loans, buy homes, start new businesses, develop new technology and products, etc. And all of that benefits us all in a big way over time. It creates long term sustainable growth.

That $200k in the hand of the employees will be spent buying more stuff for themselves. So while they will benefit, the only benefit the rest of us will see is via the effect of their consumption. That's not zero, but is basically contributing to economic growth from the other side (you have to have both an increase in production *and* an increase in demand for the production to realize growth).


Point number one: It's more than wrong to say that the employer is "greedy" to keep that money for himself. In all probability, his own standard of living will not change one bit whether he keeps it or gives it to his employees. On the other hand, the employees desire to receive the money is greed, since he benefits directly and significantly from it. Not saying that this doesn't also have to do with "need", but just pointing out that the argument that the rich person doesn't need the money and is just being greedy to get more is inherently flawed.


Point two is that neither of those is inherently "better" than the other. However, we should allow the market to naturally cause the money to flow where it goes. Market forces will react to market needs (naturally even). So if there's more money in the supply side and people aren't buying enough of the products being designed and built, it'll naturally flow into people's consumer pockets and adjust for that imbalance. We don't need the government to do this manually. If the market will better benefit if those workers earn $10k/year more each year, then wages will rise. There's a whole set of long explanation as to why, but you have to trust that they will. As I've pointed out in the past, businesses don't make any money if there's no one with sufficient dollars to buy their goods. Labor demand is a market force, just like consumption demand is.


I guess what I'm getting at is that we should always default to *not* using the government to try to force a change on the economy unless there's absolutely clear justification for it. The economic need for an increase in minimum wage is non-existent. So we shouldn't do it.
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#171 Mar 04 2014 at 10:44 PM Rating: Decent
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Sir Xsarus wrote:
Quote:
I really do think that a gap between rich and poor is a sign of a healthy economy with lots of upward mobility and opportunity and *not* a bad thing.
you realize that this is not backed up by any example in reality ever right? Just saying.

Obviously there is always a gap between a rich person and poor person by definition. My point would be when that gap grows, especially to extremes as it is doing right now, that is not a sign of a health economy at all.


Ok. What is the correlation between the gap between rich and poor in the US over the last say 150 years relative to the increase or decrease in quality of life for the working class. Go!

Edited, Mar 4th 2014 8:44pm by gbaji
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#172 Mar 05 2014 at 6:25 AM Rating: Excellent
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You've just equated relative wages with buying power, so wouldn't that by definition mean that the higher the gap the lower the buying power of the lower groups?
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#173 Mar 05 2014 at 6:25 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:


But honestly, my goal on this forum is less about arguing my positions as trying to get people to recognize and use good arguments versus bad ones. It's something I see far too much of. I'll eternally challenge arguments of the "anyone who doesn't agree with me is bad" form. So there's that. And if the pattern of ratedowns I get is any indication (while we're on the subject anyway), people care less about me challenging their positions on issues as they do with me challenging why they hold those positions. And that's something I find very very interesting.


So basically the goal is to keep going no matter what until everyone else is tired of talking about it-- or until the subject comes up again and we all find ourselves in an intense state of deja vu whereas we can vaguely remember talking about it before but are fuzzy about the details and end up saying the exact same things over and over every year in some never-ending cycle.

What'll it be tomorrow? Let's spin the wheel and pray to Helix challenging the status quo doesn't mean attempting to justify the murder of another unarmed teenager.
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#174 Mar 05 2014 at 7:03 AM Rating: Good
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gbaji wrote:

But honestly, my goal on this forum is less about arguing my positions as trying to get people to recognize and use good arguments versus bad ones. It's something I see far too much of. I'll eternally challenge arguments of the "anyone who doesn't agree with me is bad" form. So there's that. And if the pattern of ratedowns I get is any indication (while we're on the subject anyway), people care less about me challenging their positions on issues as they do with me challenging why they hold those positions. And that's something I find very very interesting.

There you go starting off with the same flawed assumption that all your posts start with; that you know more, can argue better, recognize good vs bad arguments better than the average joe on this forum.

You might have said something like: "Despite our differing opinions, I can maybe learn things and better understand stuff by debating and discussing ideas with all sorts of different people that I'd not normally encounter in my day to day life."



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#175 Mar 05 2014 at 7:32 AM Rating: Excellent
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Elinda wrote:
There you go starting off with the same flawed assumption that all your posts start with; that you know more, can argue better, recognize good vs bad arguments better than the average joe on this forum.
I like that he thinks the contrarian positions he takes "for everyone else's good" are actually thought provoking. That really says a lot about his range.
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#176 Mar 05 2014 at 8:44 AM Rating: Excellent
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gbaji wrote:
But honestly, my goal on this forum is less about arguing my positions as trying to get people to recognize and use good arguments versus bad ones.

Honestly and sincerely, most of your "arguments" are terrible. Poor logic, poorly constructed, overly bloated to the extent where you start introducing errors for points you never needed to address in the first place. You constantly show yourself to be uneducated about topics and then revert to a lame "Well, it's just my opinion, man" defense to cover for your factual errors. You regularly try to act like the smartest guy in the room by denouncing "experts" and giving lengthy ideology rather than data based "counter arguments" and then are proven hilariously wrong (polls are a regular example of this). That's not to say everyone else does a consistently stellar job but then no one else here is claiming to be a light in the debating darkness either.

Even more amusing is the idea that you think you've proven anything if someone starts casually insulting or whatever and your self-assured belief that this proves you were right. You know, as opposed to people just not giving a serious effort because it's a web forum and when you know the other guy will never concede a point you eventually just get bored and post for amusement. Come on man, you've been around long enough to know that the Jane Goodall argument is one of the lamest defenses of crappy posting. "I just wanted to see what you'd say! You all fell right into my trap and proved my hypothesis!" -- this is **** that 4th rate trolls say when everyone is laughing at them. Use your supposed "logic" for a second: You really think you learn anything when one guy is treating it as serious business and everyone else is in it for the lulz?

This is where I'd post my Muppets picture if it wasn't too much effort to trawl old posts looking for the image number.
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