While I Was Away...

[Rumraket]

New blog post: Ich Dien

http://reciprocity-giving-something-back.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/ich-dein.html

Service, protest, taking a knee, etc.

Bravo!

 

[MarsCydonia]

New blog post: Ich Dien

http://reciprocity-giving-something-back.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/ich-dein.html

Service, protest, taking a knee, etc.

I like the piece as well. It's fortunate that you have the time and the ability to express what many think on this issue in this manner.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Thank you both. Very much appreciated.

Also, apologies for not contributing more to the forum. Time is limited at the moment, and I find that it's difficult for me to spend any appreciable time here when a certain user is spouting shit without it affecting my normally placid outward demeanour.

 

[Deleted member 619]

A quick note.

I've decide that it's time to do something a bit more betterer for the blog. To that end, I am now the proud owner of hackenslash.co.uk and this will be where my blog resides from here on. I'm still hosting on blogspot for the time being until I build something better, which I'll be doing over the coming weeks before I migrate all the content.

 

[Deleted member 619]

New blog post: Cold, Dead Hands

Gun control, rights and dead children

http://www.hackenslash.co.uk/2017/10/cold-dead-hands.html

 

[Rumraket]

New blog post: Cold, Dead Hands

Gun control, rights and dead children

http://www.hackenslash.co.uk/2017/10/cold-dead-hands.html

This sums up my view on gun control pretty well:

 

[Deleted member 619]

Yep. That about sums it up.

 

[Deleted member 619]

New blog post: On the Shoulders of...

http://www.hackenslash.co.uk/2017/10/on-shoulders-of.html

A tribute to some of the amazing women in STEM past and present.

 

[Deleted member 619]

New blog post: 7 Reasons Why Apologists Should Stop Trying to Logic

http://www.hackenslash.co.uk/2017/10/7-reasons-why-apologists-should-stop.html

Somebody attempts a rebuttal of my debunking of multi-omni sky-guy, with predictable results.

 

[Deleted member 619]

New blog post: Don't Drink That!

http://www.hackenslash.co.uk/2017/10/dont-drink-that.html

A treatment of the well-poisoning fallacy.

 

[Sparhafoc]

It was suggested to a writer of some repute that, if she associated with people who doubt gender identity, that she was denying transgender people the right to exist.

Well, that's very close to what happened to me in a venue which, as you know, I frequented until recently. In fact, if you'd written 'he' I would have thought you were writing in the abstract about me.

Iirc, mine was 'I don't see gender, sexuality or race on the internet because both are irrelevant with respect to the content of an argument, and I have no independent way of determining the truth of their alleged gender, sexuality or race anyway" somehow became a contention that I wanted to "dehumanize people".

 

[Sparhafoc]

There is a topic which you might want to consider writing about which plagues the internet, and so much of present day dialogue.

It's the inability to separate opinion from fact.

Many years ago, I used to do corporate training like negotiation skills. I had this incredible slide of all the numerous verbal signals we tend to make in English performing actions which show how tenuous we hold the thing in we're about to say, or softening the credibility of the statement, and so on.

For examples: It seems to me that, to be honest, I'm not so sure that I (positive rendition of their statement you wish to reject), apparently,... and dozens more.

The internet seems to have made all of them defunct.

Now, all people do is assert the facts ad nauseum, as if declaiming at a stranger. It's soap-box-ish even on a very minor scale.

It's so sadly rare to see people say things like "Well, I'm quite probably wrong but....", instead whatever it is (even the wildest flights of fantasy) appears always to be written in the declarative.

This is creeping in everywhere. I can't read the BBC website anymore because of their presumed crystal ball. How many times can they report what someone 'will' say while maintaining a straight face? Is 'is expected to say..." so alien to English speakers today that even the BBC shies away from employing it?

I wonder how valuable it would be to humanity and our well-being if we spent a few dozen hours in a child's education program to teach them the methodology of distinguishing between facts and opinions.

 

[Deleted member 619]

It was suggested to a writer of some repute that, if she associated with people who doubt gender identity, that she was denying transgender people the right to exist.

Well, that's very close to what happened to me in a venue which, as you know, I frequented until recently. In fact, if you'd written 'he' I would have thought you were writing in the abstract about me.

Iirc, mine was 'I don't see gender, sexuality or race on the internet because both are irrelevant with respect to the content of an argument, and I have no independent way of determining the truth of their alleged gender, sexuality or race anyway" somehow became a contention that I wanted to "dehumanize people".

Indeed, though I wasn't writing about you, or I'd have said 'one of my good friends', or some such. I'm working toward finding the middle ground in this, not least because there's a massive grey area in there that I'm still trying to figure out in terms of where productive discourse can be had and where it's coloured by perception to the degree that it isn't even worth going there. I always like to think that there's good talk to be had, but I'm also aware that sometimes it's bit difficult to see above the parapet from an entrenched position. Trying to break down the barriers to effective communication is hard.

I had an experience with a black woman recently in which we seemed to be having some good discussion until somebody else interjected, ostensibly trying to support me after I'd already conceded that my own interjection in the discussion lacked the clarity necessary to make it obvious that I was in fact agreeing with her and providing case evidence in support, rather than the mansplaining she took it to be.

The interjection, she took as racially motivated, despite there being nothing to indicate that. She ended up calling me a toxic ally and 100% of the problem, simply because I wouldn't denounce somebody as racist when I could see no evidence that this was in fact the case, and this was somebody I know to be a universal ally, much like myself. She ended up blocking me, which I thought was a shame, because I enjoyed her posts for the most part, her being a chemist, and providing some half-decent scicomm material.

It's a fine line we tread as CIS white men.

 

[Deleted member 619]

There is a topic which you might want to consider writing about which plagues the internet, and so much of present day dialogue.

It's the inability to separate opinion from fact.

Many years ago, I used to do corporate training like negotiation skills. I had this incredible slide of all the numerous verbal signals we tend to make in English performing actions which show how tenuous we hold the thing in we're about to say, or softening the credibility of the statement, and so on.

For examples: It seems to me that, to be honest, I'm not so sure that I (positive rendition of their statement you wish to reject), apparently,... and dozens more.

The internet seems to have made all of them defunct.

Now, all people do is assert the facts ad nauseum, as if declaiming at a stranger. It's soap-box-ish even on a very minor scale.

It's so sadly rare to see people say things like "Well, I'm quite probably wrong but....", instead whatever it is (even the wildest flights of fantasy) appears always to be written in the declarative.

This is creeping in everywhere. I can't read the BBC website anymore because of their presumed crystal ball. How many times can they report what someone 'will' say while maintaining a straight face? Is 'is expected to say..." so alien to English speakers today that even the BBC shies away from employing it?

I wonder how valuable it would be to humanity and our well-being if we spent a few dozen hours in a child's education program to teach them the methodology of distinguishing between facts and opinions.

This is again something I'm working toward, and it's going to be a major portion of the book. Most of what I'm doing now is laying the groundwork for precisely that.

 

[Sparhafoc]

Indeed, though I wasn't writing about you, or I'd have said 'one of my good friends', or some such. I'm working toward finding the middle ground in this, not least because there's a massive grey area in there that I'm still trying to figure out in terms of where productive discourse can be had and where it's coloured by perception to the degree that it isn't even worth going there. I always like to think that there's good talk to be had, but I'm also aware that sometimes it's bit difficult to see above the parapet from an entrenched position. Trying to break down the barriers to effective communication is hard.

I had an experience with a black woman recently in which we seemed to be having some good discussion until somebody else interjected, ostensibly trying to support me after I'd already conceded that my own interjection in the discussion lacked the clarity necessary to make it obvious that I was in fact agreeing with her and providing case evidence in support, rather than the mansplaining she took it to be.

The interjection, she took as racially motivated, despite there being nothing to indicate that. She ended up calling me a toxic ally and 100% of the problem, simply because I wouldn't denounce somebody as racist when I could see no evidence that this was in fact the case, and this was somebody I know to be a universal ally, much like myself. She ended up blocking me, which I thought was a shame, because I enjoyed her posts for the most part, her being a chemist, and providing some half-decent scicomm material.

It's a fine line we tread as CIS white men.

The way I see it - some people are just plain nuts and expect the world to revolve around them and their limited comprehension. I may be wrong about X, and I hope I am always open to hearing why, but being wrong about X doesn't make me Y and Z that have nothing to do with what I said just because someone says so!

 

[Sparhafoc]

This is again something I'm working toward, and it's going to be a major portion of the book. Most of what I'm doing now is laying the groundwork for precisely that.

Then I expect it will be the most interesting section of the book for me!

The more people who can clock this, the faster our species can grow out of its infancy.

 

[Deleted member 619]

Aye.

 

[he_who_is_nobody]

Bad enough, though, that this tactic was employed throughout the campaign. What's even worse is that it's still being used by the White House even now. Only Thursday, Sarah Sanders, White House Press Secretary, appeared on Fox News. Fox has traditionally been a safe venue for the Trump administration but, in a rare instance of being presented with a tough question, Bill Hemmers asked Sarah Sanders a question about the ongoing investigation into possible collusion with Russian actors during the election. Without skipping a beat, Sanders leapt straight to talking about how Clinton had, as secretary of state, been involved in a deal involving American stocks of uranium.

Is this not an example of the tu quoque fallacy?

 

[Steelmage99]

Bad enough, though, that this tactic was employed throughout the campaign. What's even worse is that it's still being used by the White House even now. Only Thursday, Sarah Sanders, White House Press Secretary, appeared on Fox News. Fox has traditionally been a safe venue for the Trump administration but, in a rare instance of being presented with a tough question, Bill Hemmers asked Sarah Sanders a question about the ongoing investigation into possible collusion with Russian actors during the election. Without skipping a beat, Sanders leapt straight to talking about how Clinton had, as secretary of state, been involved in a deal involving American stocks of uranium.

Is this not an example of the tu quoque fallacy?

Wouldn't it only be a tu quoque if the statement "Hillary sold 20% of US' uranium to Russia" was actually true, instead of the nonsense that it is?

 

[Deleted member 619]

Bad enough, though, that this tactic was employed throughout the campaign. What's even worse is that it's still being used by the White House even now. Only Thursday, Sarah Sanders, White House Press Secretary, appeared on Fox News. Fox has traditionally been a safe venue for the Trump administration but, in a rare instance of being presented with a tough question, Bill Hemmers asked Sarah Sanders a question about the ongoing investigation into possible collusion with Russian actors during the election. Without skipping a beat, Sanders leapt straight to talking about how Clinton had, as secretary of state, been involved in a deal involving American stocks of uranium.

Is this not an example of the tu quoque fallacy?

It is, and indeed I'd meant to make mention of the tu quoque, but it slipped my mind. Thing is, the tu quoque is, in all cases, poisoning the well. As I said, poisoning the well is a tactic, rather than a fallacy in its own right. It always involves the commission of another fallacy of relevance, of which the tu quoque is an example.

it was an oversight on my part not to include that in the discussion, and I will correct that omission tomorrow, but it doesn't materially impact the point.

Good catch.