The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => History => Topic started by: lprkn on October 17, 2007, 08:52:10 pm
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Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix, has a piece on him in the Times (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article2630748.ece). Among other things, he states that Afrcans are less intelligent than Europeans. Apparently when you're 79 and already have a Nobel Prize, you don't give two shits about controversy.
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Dr. James Watson, co-discoverer of the double helix, has a piece on him in the Times (http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article2630748.ece). Among other things, he states that Afrcans are less intelligent than Europeans. Apparently when you're 79 and already have a Nobel Prize, you don't give two shits about controversy.
Its not a new idea.The Bell Curve pretty much spelled this out with hundreds of pages of data. The debate is more towards nature/nurture now in terms of social pressures and development. My personal opinion is that it is impossible to deny that groups of humans separated for thousands of years are inherently (genetically) different from each other and its ludicrous to suggest were all "the same under the skin". However, I think the effects of one's development can conquer almost any normal variation in genetic disposition.
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My personal opinion is that it is impossible to deny that groups of humans separated for thousands of years are inherently (genetically) different from each other and its ludicrous to suggest were all "the same under the skin".
Perhaps if we were talking about hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years, I'd agree with you.
But as I understand evolutionary biology, in the time since "African" and "Caucasian" humans split and developed parallel before re-meeting... there wasn't really time for any kind of real divergence that wasn't purely cosmetic.
The essential neurological wiring is functionally identical. We're all homo sapiens, we're all born pretty much the same blank slates excepting natural variance within the gene pool from individual to individual
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yeah. the idea of innate racial variance in intelligence is completely disregarded by the scientific community at this point. it just isn't... true.
also basically debunked: the concept of a "race."
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yeah. the idea of innate racial variance in intelligence is completely disregarded by the scientific community at this point. it just isn't... true.
also basically debunked: the concept of a "race."
What exactly are you basing that on other than your own personal opinion? Because in reality, where science exists, you couldn't be more wrong. Neither race nor intelligence variance of race has been debunked by the scientific community. Take a cruise around the 100+ scholarly references to the article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Race_and_intelligence) and you'll quickly realize that you're mistaken. The debate is very much alive.
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what I am basing this on is my human evolution textbook. The concept of race is generally not considered scientific, as it isn't really based on any scientific criteria. There is a big ol' chart in my book of human variation in skin tone-- basically the entire spectrum of light reflectivity (least reflectivity among the Chopi people of Mozambique (about 5%), most among, for example, people from the Netherlands (about 73%?))
Scientists have never agreed on how many "races" there are. Scientists have never agreed on how to differentiate between them. It's basically completely arbitrary. Race is a social concept.
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what I am basing this on is my human evolution textbook. The concept of race is generally not considered scientific, as it isn't really based on any scientific criteria. There is a big ol' chart in my book of human variation in skin tone-- basically the entire spectrum of light reflectivity (least reflectivity among the Chopi people of Mozambique (about 5%), most among, for example, people from the Netherlands (about 73%?))
Scientists have never agreed on how many "races" there are. Scientists have never agreed on how to differentiate between them. It's basically completely arbitrary. Race is a social concept.
Youre just arguing semantics. Then by what word do you differentiate the pale skinned people of Europe from the darker skinned people of Africa? Would it make you feel better if we said there is a link between ethnicity or Genetic-historical-origin and intelligence?
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The point is, arachnocapitalist, if we're genetically compatable enough to have fertile children, we're probably dealing from the same wide pool of possibilities.
Evolution just doesn't select out significant functioning differences that quickly. Aesthetic differences, sure, you can start to select those out relatively quickly.
But when you're talking about uniform hard-wired difference in cognitive ability, you're talking about something that just couldn't have happened between Africa and Europe. Just not enough time.
The gene pool of a distinct species doesn't work like that.
Evolution doesn't work like that, certainly not that quickly.
Now, there are CERTAINLY cultural issues... resource issues... we'll say "nurture" issues that we could debate about until the cows come home. Totally with you there.
But Einstein was Einstein because of the development of the culture he was born into, not his ethnicity. If he was a specially gifted genius, lightning hit the same as it could theoretically hit in any ethnicity and that COMBINED with the opportunies put in front of him as a middle-class European of the time and place...
THEN the dude realized energy is mass times the speed of light squared.
Had an African culture "won" the colonial wars, maybe that lightning would'a struck in Cairo or whatever. Who knows.
But we're all working off the same available set of genes, certain subcombinations within that set create the illusion of race. The fact that I could get down with one of the Williams sisters and make a baby whose skin colour would be basically somewhere between hers and mine bears that out.
If race were "real" and distinct, the baby would either come out black OR white... or the tennis player and I might not be genetically compatable at all.
Race isn't real, at least scientifically or biologically.
It's just sets of traits potentially in all of us that have been given temporal cultural significance.
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well, no, you can fuck the Williams sisters and have mad viable offspring because they are the same species as you.
and einstein is a bad example for a couple of reasons.
but, you're generally saying what I am thinking.
What I am saying, Chris, is that race is not a valid scientific concept. It is still a concept in English.
there is a statistic, and I can't remember the exact numbers... but it is something to the effect that if you killed everyone on earth except for a hundred australian aborigines, 99.9 out to many 9s percent of human genetic variation would be maintained.
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Thats all well and good. But the data come out clearly every time. The mean measured intelligence shows a difference among "races". Not by a whole lot, but a statistically significant amount.
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also relevant: IQ tests are pretty dodgy. Culturally biased, &c.
also:
The IQ scores vary greatly among different nations for the same group. Blacks in Africa score much lower than Blacks in the US. However contrary to indications from the IQ and the Wealth of Nations study, the majority of blacks enrolled in Ivy League Universities in the US are either from Africa or the Caribbean. The chairperson of the sociology department at Harvard University stated:[citation needed]
"Since they come from majority-black countries, they are less psychologically handicapped by the stigma of race."
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also relevant: IQ tests are pretty dodgy. Culturally biased, &c.
Then how do you want to measure intelligence? There is no single test or aggregate of tests that does not show this difference.
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badly.
I mean, any scale where the White IQ average is 100... because that's how they designed the test... oof.
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badly.
I mean, any scale where the White IQ average is 100... because that's how they designed the test... oof.
Like i said, show me a test or composite of tests that do not show a difference across racial groups. And if the great white conspiracy was to make them look good, then why do those of jewish and eastern asian heritage score the highest?
The point is that my position is based on FACTS and DATA while your positions are based on emotions and pre-conceived ideas of Equality No Matter What.
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Absolutely.
An intelligence test will ALWAYS be biased toward the point-of-view, educational-base, cultural-base, etc of the people who wrote the test.
I will also do much better on a test of reading a map of Los Angeles than most people, even many people who are much better map readers than I am. This is because I have lived in Los Angeles for four years and worked a job where some of the job was driving-based.
You're talking about cultural factors, arachnocapitalist, that were unfairly assigned to genetic/racial factors.
Not actual genetic/racial/biological factors at all.
Or at least, we shall say, we have no way of proving that the factors are actually biological.
A is hardly ever A, even if we see two letter As right next to each other.
Typed, handwritten, uppercase, lowercase, cursive. Written in pen, written in crayon, written in goldleaf. Long a, short a or when sounding like neighbor or way. Comic sans, Time New Roman.
There's only one place where A can ever be completely A. And that's in theory.
There is no way to parse out the factors to actual assign the differences in intelligence "scores" to anything actually biological.
It's all nurture, every last drop, I've never seen a study "proving" difference that didn't come down to the researchers blatantly ignoring the cultural factors involved.
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Absolutely.
An intelligence test will ALWAYS be biased toward the point-of-view, educational-base, cultural-base, etc of the people who wrote the test.
...
It's all nurture, every last drop, I've never seen a study "proving" difference that didn't come down to the researchers blatantly ignoring the cultural factors involved.
So the IQ test (and every other measure of intelligence is a Jew/Asian conspiracy? Or is it a white conspiracy to make them look mediocre? I dont understand the motivations here.
Actually, theres plenty of study proving differences that have nothing to do with "nurture". Ever hear of retardation? child prodigies? Autism? etc, etc
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dude, I don't give a fuck. Testing people's intelligence is a bullshit concept.
I am saying this as:
1. Someone who tests extremely well
2. A white guy
3. a psych major.
standardized tests just do not work well. environment has hell of influence on these things. and there is no way to eliminate the environmental effects, outside of creating some sort of Utopian Monolithic Society where Everyone is Treated Equally at All Times.
I mean, it is hell of impossible to cite this evidence as significant. I don't know that much about experimental methods (yet), but if there is such as A Sneeze in a Chemistry Experiment, they scrap the results. Intelligence is the sum total of a person's entirety of life experience up to that point... there's no way to differentiate "innate" IQ out...
it's just such a silly concept.
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So when all the available data disagrees with your pre-determined conclusion you just write it off as hogwash?
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It's not a conspiracy at all, arachnocapitalist. It's unavoidable cultural bias is all.
Nothing made by human hand can be neutral. It'll always be skewed by the assumptions of the human inventing it, even if the human is doing his or her hot-damnedest to not have bias.
Human condition. Renders such studies suspect at the very best to begin with.
And, yes, there's retardation and genius and autism and schizophrenia and so on.
And all of those gifts and differences occur across the "racial" spectrum, fairly uniformly, again, depending on how well a given culture is able to diagnose them, the environmental factors, the quality of medical care natally and in early life, etc.
These gifts and differences are a part of the overall gene pool, not any particular "race".
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when the data comes from sources that cannot possibly correct for outside factors? yes.
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So, my understanding of the IQ test is that it basically grew out of the Eugenics movement as a way to measure intelligence, along with head size categorization. However, unlike skull size and Margaret Sanger's legacy, the IQ test has merely gone through many different variations in an attempt to remain relevant. The idea of a test that measures no-bullshit intelligence is an attractive one, but appears to me to be ultimately, somewhat like the unicorn.
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A-CAP, please define "race" for us.
Since you are so certain it exists, perhaps you can describe it in a way that will allow us to definitively and scientifically use it as a distinguishing characteristic between any two given individuals. What are the "races" and how do we place individuals into them? What objective tests do we use to determine "race"?
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Been talking about this all day with people at work, general consensus is:
a) Intelligence tests are generally culturally biased, as is the concept of intelligence. What's more intelligent: A dude fixing a computer or someone bringing down a deer using a stick and some rocks? Context is everything and if your background is different from the person giving you the test you're going to be at a disadvantage but this doesn't actually matter in this case because....
b) It doesn't seem like he's actually talking about a specfic study (except that Bell Curve book I've seen referenced a couple of times which is hardly recent data) more that he expects genetic evidence to prove him right in the long term, so until he has a study with reasonable power and significance I don't really care about his opinion. Seriously man, science doesn't care what you think, show me something. I might be wrong on this point and I'm sorry if I've missed something.
c) There are certainly differences between people of different ethnic backgrounds (or races or whatever you want to call them), since it seems to have become stupidly important in this thread I'll define race as people from a breeding group that is relatively large but that has also been relatively isolated for the last (at least) few thousand years and therefore certain genetic traits have become more common than in other breeding groups. Examples include: sickle cell anemia in african males and low alcohol tolerance in people of asian background due to lack of aldehyde dehydrogenase enzymes. Anyway the point is we are not all the same under the skin and this is important because it can have very significant impact on medical treatments especially when treating large numbers of people in impoverished areas, it's also a crying shame that people make such a fuss over this because it makes it harder to do research that suggests there is any difference without getting shouted down by people who care more about their narrow world view than reality. That said just because a trait is common in a particular race is no reason to apply it mindlessly to all people with that background, probability is great but just because 50% of some group have a probability of x each individual has a 100% probability one way or the other. On top of that intelligence is fuck*ng complex thing, nature vs. nurture and all that and I for one would be suprised if a varying levels of intelligence (however you want to define it) was simply a function of genetics, beyond severe disabilities natch.
and finally:
D) fuck*ng HELL WATSON! You discovered the double helix, why fuck with your legacy over some opinionated drivel. If you think there is actually a difference do a good study and present the data, that is how science fuck*ng works.
Aight, that's me done. Who's next?
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A-CAP, please define "race" for us.
Since you are so certain it exists, perhaps you can describe it in a way that will allow us to definitively and scientifically use it as a distinguishing characteristic between any two given individuals. What are the "races" and how do we place individuals into them? What objective tests do we use to determine "race"?
I didn't invent the concept of race. But its just plain silly to say that there aren't recognizable broad groups of human beings from various common ancestries who, while still human, have developed as a population with a greater degree of genetic similarity than the world as a whole. A larger version of a family, if you will.
Tribe A migrates from NJ to Alaska and Tribe B migrates to Texas. If just by chance the members of 'A' happened to be slightly more intelligent than 'B' and continue to interbreed with each other and build a population then the traits originally dominant will, over a long period of time, approach a standard distribution, but in the period of transition may favor greater intelligence to a diminishing degree. When society advances so that they are able to travel and trade and date between tribes, the population size will lend towards an even more normal distribution. I believe the data show that since it has only been a couple hundred years of such substantial interaction between "races" that we are still approaching this normal distribution for all populations. In the meantime, however, the original differences of the migratory groups will persist to varying degrees.
The examples previously given by other members here serve to support this conclusion. Re: African-Americans vs. African IQ results, Jewish vs. European.
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I think "there's no such thing as race" is just too vague and undefined a statement,
Then define "race". In a scientific sense.
Clearly "race" exists, as a social construct if nothing else. But we're talking about biology here, not sociology.
What I understand you to be saying is that there is an objective classification system which may be used as a predictor of an individual's physical, intellectual or emotional characteristics. So I'll ask again:
What is race? What are the races? How do we test for it?
Because it seems to me that unless we can agree on answers to those questions, any "scientific" study which uses "race" as a variable is pretty shaky.
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Then define "race". In a scientific sense.
Clearly "race" exists, as a social construct if nothing else. But we're talking about biology here, not sociology.
And "race" is widely variable depending on where you are. I've talked to European and Asian friends online who were dumbfounded to find out that in the US we consider White/Caucasian and Hispanic/Latino to be different things. They were like, "but people from Mexico are white. Why would you need a separate checkbox for them on a form?" Of course we do sometimes combine India, China, Japan, Korea, and Samoa all into one checkbox, which they found equally crazy.
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And... even if you come up with something CLOSE to a "scientific" definition of a race...
A combination of ranges of parameters, facial features, flesh tones, etc?
You're never ever ever gonna find a "black" gene or a "white" gene or whatever.
You MIGHT even figure out what SEQUENCE of genes makes you fit those parameter.
But all of those genes are in every "racial" gene pool. If you had the time and the bread and the willing subjects, you could definitely "breed" a white-looking person out of a "black" gene pool and you could "breed" an Asian-looking person out of a "white" gene pool and so on.
Not to mention the cases that blow the whole argument to hell, such as Barak Obama definitely "looking" black but clearly being "half-white" or the Lana Lang on Smallville, definitely looking "Asian" but being "half-white" or so on.
And then... oh boy... the baseball players who you'd call "black" until they opened their mouths and their accent would suddenly make you wanna call 'em "Latin" in some fashion or manner.
Applying hard-science things like genetics and species definition to completely completely COMPLETELY culturally constructed concepts like "race" are total bullshit.
My brother and I have the same father and mother. We're Italian and Slovenian and Belorus in extraction. We're at the slavic-swarthy end of the "white" spectrum but if you asked 99.999% of Americans in the year 2007 what we are ethnically, you'd definitely say:
"White".
Same two parents, a full-blooded Slovenian woman, a half-Italian half-Belorus father. Everybody white.
And yet... even though we're full brothers and anyone would call us both white, we're both completely European in extraction...
I've seen many times where people ask my brother if he's some part Asian, because he has squinty eyes and thin jetblack hair.
And I've experienced many times where people assumed that I had a Jewish grandparent, because I have thick dark brown hair and a certain shape to my nose.
When he's with his girlfriend of full Thai extraction, he gets it even more.
When he's with multiple members of my dad's side of the family, he never gets it at all, because even though he has squinty eyes and thin jetblack hair, he's surrounded by very Italian looking people who he's clearly related to.
When I was in the Adirondacks, where there was almost no Jewish population, I never got it.
When I was in New York City... or at Syracuse University where the majority of students were from the NYC area... I got it all the time.
Race is a made-up thing for the purposes of the hard-sciences this dude is an expert in.
He has confused his expertice into another field and that's regrettable.
But it's also completely wrong.
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Im not sure but I believe the subjects in the bell curve at least were self identified as "Asian", "Black","White", etc. On this level I dont see how a mistake could be made. (We certainly expect a much higher level of detail when asking college students to identify themselves on applications for scholarships, or public employees on job applications). Its pretty easy to know what continent you're from. Further, it generates a large sample size for each group and thus more accurate results.
Ethnicity has been and will continue to be used in scientific studies. Im not the guy who decided it was real and useful, that was decided by a community of people with many more letters after their names.
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Im not sure but I believe the subjects in the bell curve at least were self identified as "Asian", "Black","White", etc. On this level I dont see how a mistake could be made. (We certainly expect a much higher level of detail when asking college students to identify themselves on applications for scholarships, or public employees on job applications). Its pretty easy to know what continent you're from. Further, it generates a large sample size for each group and thus more accurate results.
Ok, so what is the criteria? Geographic? If I'm a native of the area between the Caucausus and the Pacific Ocean? Therefore Turks and Japanese are racially equivalent?
Or is it a skin tone thing? What is the exact epidermically reflected wavelength that divides a "Black" from a "White"? Where do albinos fit in? Or over-zealous tanners?
Ethnicity has been and will continue to be used in scientific studies. Im not the guy who decided it was real and useful, that was decided by a community of people with many more letters after their names.
Ah. The appeal to authority. Let's see how you respond to an analogous argument.
Many well known and degreed political and economic scholars (e.g.Marx, Engels and Lenin) agree that communism is a useful and effective system for running a country. Therefore it must be true.
Im not the guy who decided it was real and useful, that was decided by a community of people with many more letters after their names.
OK, fair enough. If you can't give me your own definition of "race", give me the current definition approved by the folks with many letters after their names.
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Many well known and degreed political and economic scholars (e.g.Marx, Engels and Lenin) agree that communism is a useful and effective system for running a country. Therefore it must be true.
Well, you got that part right.
Also, there is only one race that scientists have been able to identify--that being the human race. That is not to say that A-CAP is completely wrong, just, well, way overzealous. I am in the whole nurture camp myself, but if changes could occur to change color, could they not have changed other things within a group?
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Ok, so what is the criteria? Geographic? If I'm a native of the area between the Caucausus and the Pacific Ocean? Therefore Turks and Japanese are racially equivalent?
Or is it a skin tone thing? What is the exact epidermically reflected wavelength that divides a "Black" from a "White"? Where do albinos fit in? Or over-zealous tanners?
Ah. The appeal to authority. Let's see how you respond to an analogous argument.
Many well known and degreed political and economic scholars (e.g.Marx, Engels and Lenin) agree that communism is a useful and effective system for running a country. Therefore it must be true.
OK, fair enough. If you can't give me your own definition of "race", give me the current definition approved by the folks with many letters after their names.
1. If the subjects self-identified their ethnicity, then I would suggest you ask them how they arrived at their conclusions. Notice Ive never said anything about skin color, only other people here have.
2. Yes, I think its wise to refer to authority as opposed to uninformed opinions or emotions. And while it was cute to bring up communism, neither Marx, Lenin, or Engels were economists. Marx and Lenin were trained as lawyers. In fact, in an appeal to authority, you'd be hard pressed to find a modern trained economist who seriously backs up Marxism. On the other hand, there are plenty of trained social scientists who recognize differences in ethnicity.
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This guy just apologized for what he said.
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This guy just apologized for what he said.
Well sort of. I think he mainly was claiming that he was misquoted.
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Well, he didn't exactly say that either. Sort of a non-denial denial.
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Well, yes... but...
If you're an Esteemed Thinker who's starting to go dotty, man, you should've had the good sense to surround yourself with handlers that would help you protect your legacy once you started to go dotty, years and years ago.
Now his legacy is basically fucked as his name and his statement will be repeated fifteen million times in poorly-mimeographed manifestos by white supremacists, using his previous pedigree in combination with his old-man confusion of his hard-science knowledge with soft-science that he knows dick-all about to support their bullshit claims.
And even if it won't be what he's remembered for, it'll be the last thing about him that's remembered.
And that's sad as hell.
For better or for worse, man, if you're famousfamous and you're getting old, get yourself some fuckin' handlers.
If only on retainer. Jesus.
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Every now and then we forget he's a troll.
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Every now and then we forget he's a troll.
CFT!
CANNED FOR TRUTH!
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CFT!
CANNED FOR TRUTH!
Me? Really? Sorry for, you know, having opinions and engaging in substantive dialog. My bad.
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Hmmm...
troll: One who posts a deliberately provocative message to a newsgroup or message board with the intention of causing maximum disruption and argument.
Where as A-CAP is posting about something he truly believes, and what he believes happens to be different from the general populous of the board. I think you're getting a little cushy if you call this trolling. Having different beliefs from the general populous of the board doesn't make a troll, intentional derision does, and I'm not seeing it here. Differing points of view make things interesting, arguing makes things annoying. Keep it real, yo.
Trolling looks more like this: "FUK U - NIGGAZ IZ STUPID. ASIANS R SMARTER, BUT HAVE SMALL DICKS. IT IZ THE TRUTH. sCIENTISTS AGREE!"
I am not injecting my opinion on the topic at hand into this thread, mostly because I disagree with everyone on some point or other. I am bringing with my madd MOD skillz. So please try to keep this in the vein of civil discussion.
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I've been entertained by this discussion, although I've stayed out of it. I don't see a problem with the way A-CAP has stated his opinions, even if I disagree with the content of those opinions. I think he's been pretty respectful of other people's arguments. Let's not devolve into name-calling and flame wars. I will NOT hesitate to LOCK AND/OR DELETE this thread if you can't behave yourselves. Let's keep this a place where we can have discussions of our differences without splitting up into factions and making personal attacks.
Just backing you up there, s_s. Way to bring the strong sack.
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Well... we'll just say then that I guess my definition of "trolling" is more broad than you ladies' definition... but since (a.) y'all are the senior members here and (b.) I like not making attractive women angry, I'll back offa this one.
My definition of trolling doesn't just mean... people who are only in a place to troll, it also encompasses people who are productive members of a community most of the time but... occasionally and on certain subjects... take contrary positions, maintain contrary positions and refuse to budge even a little, just to rile people up and stir up trouble.
Mr. Ennewhy isn't doing that... 80-85% of the time.
But there are times wherein it seems like he takes a position just to "rile up the lefties" and then nail it home over... and over... and over... never conceding even the most obvious points (i.e. hard sciences like genetics and soft pseudo-sciences like cultural anthropology having nothing to do with each other)... just to get peoples' danders up.
In my internet handbook, you can be a part-time troll when it tickles your fancy to be... and then, when your fancy don't need tickling, be a normal and healthy part of the discussion... and in fact, that can enhance the effectiveness of the trolling when you do it.
Like as if to say "Aw man, he can't be trolling, here's three conversations about music a week ago where he was just talkin' with folk"... creating a complication that protects one from being immediately accused of fightin' just to fight.
I should know. I've done that on other boards m'self. haha.
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soft pseudo-sciences like cultural anthropology
!!!!
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Cultural anthropology can be rad, inev. However, it is not like hard science in any way. It is a shifting set of gray-scaled assumptions, it is a platter on a stack of turtles and it is turtles all the damn way down.
Apples and oranges, trying to co-relate a science and a... way of thinking, pseudo-science is probably a bit harsh/incorrect but... yeah. A discipline.
A gene can be measured, sequenced, quantified, etc.
Cultural anthropology can be infered, extrapolated, compared, etc.
They're basically incompatible concepts, there's almost no overlap.
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Well LFM, I cant apologize if my true beliefs "rile you up". I think my position on things in the world has been focused and even predictable at this point. While engaging in discussion with people I would not otherwise have the chance to hear is something I enjoy, I don't remember a time when I've just made up some belief to bother people. I'll take the high road here and leave you as the only person here who has taken a genuine debate to the level of personal insults.
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Isn't that a personal insult?
It always seemed to me that people who say that kind of stuff are themselves making personal attacks in a way. Now if you would have said, like, that is a personal attack, then it would not be. But you are using his attacks against you personally to discredit his position without defending your position, which is definitely some type of fallacy.
I like you both and don't care, I've got to take LFM's side here, but you know, this issue isn't going to make me hate you or nothing (actually, this is the type of issue that does make me seriously hate people in real life, but I don't think NY is arguing for racism or whatever), I have just always thought saying stuff like what A-CAP just said is another version of a personal attack.
Either way, you aren't going to change anybodies mind anymore, so whatever. (I brought up this one incident here were me and someone got into an argument and then he attacked me and then accused me of attacking him when I didn't (at all, it is al there to see) and then everyone supported him because of seniority, but instead I deleted it and am going to go drink and watch the Red Sox after a long day of recovering from last nights parties and reading.) Edit: with this last part I was trying to say let it go, but that part never came out. Also, go Red Sox.
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yeah, I was thinking the same thing.
"I won't mention my opponent's personal life. I just don't think that's appropriate."
*all of america rushes to google to look for the dirt*
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For what it's worth, I've never doubted that you were sincere, A-CAP, and therefore not a troll.
I'm glad you're here. We don't agree on much, but it would be pretty fuck*ng boring if we didn't have anything to argue about. Plus, I get to marvel at how totally fuck*ng wrong you are.
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My definition of trolling doesn't just mean... people who are only in a place to troll, it also encompasses people who are productive members of a community most of the time but... occasionally and on certain subjects... take contrary positions, maintain contrary positions and refuse to budge even a little, just to rile people up and stir up trouble.
Mr. Ennewhy isn't doing that... 80-85% of the time.
But there are times wherein it seems like he takes a position just to "rile up the lefties" and then nail it home over... and over... and over... never conceding even the most obvious points (i.e. hard sciences like genetics and soft pseudo-sciences like cultural anthropology having nothing to do with each other)... just to get peoples' danders up.
In my internet handbook, you can be a part-time troll when it tickles your fancy to be... and then, when your fancy don't need tickling, be a normal and healthy part of the discussion... and in fact, that can enhance the effectiveness of the trolling when you do it.
Like as if to say "Aw man, he can't be trolling, here's three conversations about music a week ago where he was just talkin' with folk"... creating a complication that protects one from being immediately accused of fightin' just to fight.
I had no idea that A-CAP was so shrewd. Even when he is being a good border it's part of his greater scheme to troll.
A-CAP, that is awesome and deserves a can.
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... creating a complication that protects one from being immediately accused of fightin' just to fight.
You're saying that like its a bad thing. Maybe that's my Irish heritage though. I always get confused when someone stands up, asks for a fight, loses, and then avoids the victor. If you're going to be a bad sport about it, don't pick the fight in the first place.
:)
Note that the "you" in my above construction shouldn't be interpreted as LFM. I'm just sayin'.
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wait, so, if you lose a fight, you hang out with the victor a lot? dang. That is some counterintuitive shit right there.
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wait, so, if you lose a fight, you hang out with the victor a lot? dang. That is some counterintuitive shit right there.
If its a recreational fight, sure. Those rarely happen to 38 year old professionals though. Except on intarweb message boards.
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Heh. Reminds me of highschool. This girl I didn't know just started coming up to me and saying things like "I hate you" "I'm going to beat you up after class" "I'm going to kill you." It seemed so odd and random since I hadn't even spoken to her until she started coming up to me a threatening me. I just sort of chuckled and mostly just ignored her threats. She did eventually beat up one of my acquaintances after school. Then one day she wanted to be my partner on some class project that we had to work on at home. I mean she really wanted to be my partner. So I was her partner, but I was really worried. I went over to her house expecting her to beat me up, but she was really overly nice to the point of fakeness and continued to be that way until she changed schools. I was always feeling like it was ruse. Like one day, when I finally let my guard down - BLAM! It's very counter intuitive to spend time with someone who is want to do you harm. Looking back now, I think maybe she felt guilty because that one acquaintance of mine she did beat up ended up turning suicidal and had to be institutionalized. So maybe she was trying to make amends with me to alleviate some of her guilt? Odd.
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... Looking back now, I think maybe she felt guilty because that one acquaintance of mine she did beat up ended up turning suicidal and had to be institutionalized. So maybe she was trying to make amends with me to alleviate some of her guilt? Odd.
Yikes. Though it sounds like they institutionalized the wrong lady
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speaking of people who apparently can say anything they want:
I for some reason suddenly thought of when... my anthro professor told us that there's a Culture War going on in this country, and that he considers it his Duty to Arm us as Soldiers in the Culture War.
I am pretty sure that when people on the anti-evolution side say things like that, I vomit a little.
also, it seemed pretty crass when 3 days later he announced he was stepping down as Head of the Anthro department, and becoming Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
I also really enjoyed "I find it... it's fascinating that Ann Coulter's new book has a chapter about Evolution. I didn't realize she was trained as an anthropologist. I'm sure she had a lot of interesting scientific points to make based on her research, but I will never know, because I will not be reading it."
it's weird because... he is a pretty professional guy. Except when he does things like... imitate how a gorilla walks, or make a joke about how often Bonobos have lesbian sex.
So, yeah, I have crushes on multiple of my male professors.
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I am pretty sure the Bill O'Reilly talks about the culture wars all the time. I think he even has a book about it.
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On the topic of Ayn Coulter, man, I hate to steal a line from "The Shawshank Redemption" but...
I believe that to be an anthropologist, one must first be human.
I ain't the type to fight a pre-emptive war... but if the motherfuckers bring the Culture War to my porch, I'm sure as fuck ready to fight back. The good guys don't fight proactively, that's part of what makes them good guys, but motherfuckers, if it's about direct self-defense, man, I'm ready for the Culture War.
Wars of words and wars of bombs, if you start the fight, you're pretty much always the bad guy. It's an important rule.
But just cuz you will do everything to avoid a fight humanly possible, it don't mean that you can't fight.
It just means that you're principled. It just means that you're the good guy.
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On the topic of Ayn Coulter, man, I hate to steal a line from "The Shawshank Redemption" but...
Ann Coulter - like And Without the d. Ayn Rand. Like Line without the L.
They have different names and dramatically different philosophies.
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I know the difference, I just like spelling them the same way.
Bitter scrawny sexless shills, both, spoutin' out stuff you know they couldn't actually believe because it turns 'em a dime.
Rush Limbaugh with smaller titties. PT Barnum with a dried-out lifeless vajayjay.
Ain't nothin' wrong with making your money as a "bad guy" entertainer but... man... you gotta wink occasionally or I'm gonna assume you're just crazy. Ric Flair had the good sense to wink when he was a heel and so you deep-down liked him more than the good guy wrestler that you knew you were "supposed" to root for.
Even Andy Kaufman winked, it's just you had to be real fast to catch it.
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I know the difference, I just like spelling them the same way.
Bitter scrawny sexless shills, both, spoutin' out stuff you know they couldn't actually believe because it turns 'em a dime.
Rush Limbaugh with smaller titties. PT Barnum with a dried-out lifeless vajayjay.
Ain't nothin' wrong with making your money as a "bad guy" entertainer but... man... you gotta wink occasionally or I'm gonna assume you're just crazy. Ric Flair had the good sense to wink when he was a heel and so you deep-down liked him more than the good guy wrestler that you knew you were "supposed" to root for.
Even Andy Kaufman winked, it's just you had to be real fast to catch it.
Wow. That was really mature and insightful. I just wish I understood how someone could say something like that in the same thread he accused me of being a troll for saying things to purposefully rile people up. Surely that wasn't at all what you were trying to do when you called someone important to me a... "sexless shill" with a "dried out lifeless vajayjay? No, certainly you weren't doing that to rile me up. Ass.
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Ah, I was riffing, actually.
But I'll admit that's hard to distinguish from taking a shot at you, without the context at intonation, you're right.
Mea maxima culpa.
You get a potshot at Kurt Vonnegut when I least expect it, definitely.