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Journal smittyoneeach's Journal: A Rhetorical Divide-and-Conquer? 29

Journal by smittyoneeach
The discussions are lengthy and digression-filled. Fine.

The fascinating rhetorical device unique to this site is/l

-- demanding references

-- zooming in on those references to granular detail, drilling down for "facts" and "evidence"

-- systematically rejecting everything offered

I will confess to falling prey and getting spun up in years past.

But if one steps back to observe the D-n-C methodology, all of the shrill cries for "facts" and "evidence" take on a self-mocking cast.

Possibly all of the posturing is sincere and I'm misinterpreting. If so, please forgive me, as I do you, and have an excellent weekend.
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A Rhetorical Divide-and-Conquer? More

A Rhetorical Divide-and-Conquer?

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  • Possibly all of the posturing is sincere and I'm misinterpreting.

    Being as I have asked you for facts and you have declined to provide them. Instead you declare yourself victorious by not providing them. Maybe you should try providing facts when asked for them, and see what happens? Otherwise the (often incorrectly attributed) adage about doing the same thing repeatedly comes to mind.

    Really, it might be time for you to consider that when I ask for facts, I actually want you to provide them.

    • Instead you declare yourself victorious by not providing them.

      I quote explicitly declared you the winner. Because no once can be cool like you. No one.

      • Really, it might be time for you to consider that when I ask for facts, I actually want you to provide them.

        I quote explicitly declared you the winner.

        I have repeatedly rejected your declaration. I have asked simply for facts, and you have repeatedly refused to provide any.

        You don't really expect to be able to defend a PhD thesis this way, do you? Even if you're less hostile towards your committee, no committee worth its salt would accept a response of "because I said so" in response to a question asking about an information or method source.

        • You don't really expect to be able to defend a PhD thesis this way, do you? Even if you're less hostile towards your committee

          Were my committee a tendentious pack of creeps, I'd be unlikely to stick around, yes.

          • You don't really expect to be able to defend a PhD thesis this way, do you? Even if you're less hostile towards your committee

            Were my committee a tendentious pack of creeps, I'd be unlikely to stick around, yes.

            A PhD defense is not about your feelings and opinions. A PhD defense needs to be well rooted in actual facts. If you defended a thesis the way you have defended your conspiracies here you would never be granted your degree. Your lack of facts would not even suffice for a Terminal Master's.

            • OK, fine, I'll be less gracious: "Were my committee a tendentious pack of creeps of your sort, I'd be unlikely to stick around, yes."
              • Your committee would do no favors to themselves, their institution, or their field of study to allow someone to defend a thesis when it is based on "because I said so". You might think they are your friends but if they are worth anything they will hold you to a much higher standard of facts than what you have ever exhibited here. I hope you're prepared for that.

                Your research concept isn't awful but if you can't be bothered to show any kind of factual support for your conclusions you'll never be granted
                • Absolutely. Strong concur. But one goes to the job or the school to work, and simply blows off steam here. Both efforts benefit thereby. "Lighten up, Francis."
                  • So outside of your academic life then, do facts have no value to you at all? I can't make you into a scientist but I can't help but wonder what you have to gain by living such a strange dual existence.

                    • I can't make you into a scientist but I can't help but wonder what you have to gain by living such a strange dual existence.

                      I mean, I already shared with you what I think is a general existential model: the Maslow-3D thing. How you managed to reduce that to some duality eludes me.

                    • I can't make you into a scientist but I can't help but wonder what you have to gain by living such a strange dual existence.

                      I mean, I already shared with you what I think is a general existential model: the Maslow-3D thing. How you managed to reduce that to some duality eludes me.

                      No the dual existence is that in academia you can only survive on facts. You cannot progress on feelings and desires. Here you are projecting exactly the opposite; you are living as someone who projects only feelings and desires, and cares not at all about facts.

                    • You realize that we live in a post-Modern world? Nobody in the secular realm, inside or outside of academia, gives a fact about anything anymore. If anything, facts are racist, bigoted, and rooted in conspiracy theories, and I'm quite shocked to see you deploy the f-word at all.

                    • If anything, facts are racist, bigoted, and rooted in conspiracy theories

                      I suspect I might know where you're actually trying to go with that line of absurdity but I reject it nonetheless. We should be able to agree that certain things can be proven with facts. We should be able to agree that Trump won the electoral vote in 2016 and lost it in 2020. There are many other facts we should be able to agree on as well.

                      Yet you continue to peddle conspiracies here that you cannot support with facts. It's not that you have conspiratorial facts for them, you have no facts for the

                    • Yet you continue to peddle conspiracies here that you cannot support with facts.

                      I will defend your greatness to the death against all claims that you're the North end of a South-bound mule.

                    • Yet you continue to peddle conspiracies here that you cannot support with facts.

                      I will defend your greatness to the death against all claims that you're the North end of a South-bound mule.

                      And still, no facts from you. I would think there would have been something you have shared before in all this time that would have turned out to have been supported by facts. Anything, anytime, at all. Have all your posts been completely devoid of facts? Have you not shared a single conspiracy that turned out to be true?

                      It's not terribly difficult to find conspiracies that turned out to be true [rd.com] . I'm just not aware of any that you have shared that turned out to be connected to reality.

                    • My suggestion is to keep pounding the table until either the table or your hand is completely fact up.
                    • That leaves open the question of why you refuse to look for facts to support your past favorite conspiracies. Did you not expect them to ever pan out, are you too wounded to see them not pan out to be able to search for facts, or is there something else at play here?

                      I would expect that you are aware of how many of your conspiracies have fallen into the same historical trash bin as pizzagate. I would also expect that if you have shared any conspiracies that have materialized into something meaningful -
                    • I love you, man.

  • Main method I learned in the old usenet flame wars:
    1. Ignore all insults, personal or group
    2. Find the partial fact in your opposers argument
    3. Use Meta analysis to take that fact to ad abusrdium level
    4. Goto 1

    Now that's trolling at a +1 level

    • Yeah. On the other hand, I've had to up my game and realize that much of what passes for discussion here is a more refined trolling that passes itself off as a serious discussion.

  • Yeah.. then they say nothing was offered...

    :-) Gee! Where have I heard that before??

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As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain, they do not refer to reality. -- Albert Einstein

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