Please Educate Yourselves (v2)

[size=1]Blah blah. intelligence is over rated. blah blah.[/h]

This maybe off-topic (or not) but I don't necessarily agree with the above chart. I'll gladly discuss something with you even if I know you wont change my mind. I'll hear you out and not sound like I am lecturing you, but many times subjects of "serious" discussions touch upon core beliefs in a person's life. Two things that bother me about that chart is: 1) Many people expect you to answer yes to all of the above without expecting the same attitude of themselves to be shown 2) You do not have to have a discussion for the purpose changing each others minds.

As a side note, I have found that many times disagreements arise not because of difference of opinion on "facts" but on the authority that those facts carry. Also important to note is many times the person who presents the most "evidence" or during a discussion "wins the debate", these people are not always correct. Winning an argument does not make you correct, it only means just that - you are a better debater and won the argument.

@ shag I added your post to the main post. Thanks.

@ Neko I see what you mean, the chart is for debate more than discussion, but despite the misnomer, it is a very good rule of thumb for intelligent arguments in my opinion. Also, "winning" a debate in the eyes of observers is what you are talking about, whereas actually proving your opponents position to be false (to a negligible degree of doubt) is what actually winning an argument is about.

Actually, proving your opponents position to be faulty, at least to the point that all of, or nearly all of their points are faulty is highly rare and you'll probably never see this occur in actual debate.

The reason for this is because things are as black and white as you seem to believe. Most issues up for debates have multiple sides to them, with multiple points and possibilities to believe in and reason for those points.

And since it is impossible to have a fact be 100% certain, there is often a lot of room for interpretation, especially when you consider that most debates of an element of philosophy in them on top of everything.

So what is the point of a debate? Well it is to refine ideas and logic.

I believe point A about topic 1 with reasoning a.

You demonstrate that reasoning a is faulty due to logic b. Does that mean point A is faulty? Not necessarily. It could just mean that that particular support is faulty. I could discover reasoning b instead with much better defines point A.

Or maybe this makes me realize that point A is not perfect. I sit down and find new reasoning which makes me believe that while point A is faulty to a degree, if I refine it to point A.1 it becomes much stronger and more logical.

Being under the assumption that you can only 'win' a debate by 'proving' it to be false is pretty closed-minded actually. You already are losing out on the purpose of a debate if you go into it with the mind of "I HAVE TO PROVE THEM WRONG!"

If you are unable to accept the possibility that you are wrong and view all the facts available in the same light, then you are only looking at one side of the situation and are not being logical.

EDIT: After re reading what you have written Takerial, I have revised my stance, as I was ascribing a different meaning to your words.

YES, scientific laws are "falsifiable" in that they are measurable, and if repeated data came to light that violated them they would be falsified.

HOWEVER, (and this is what I originally meant, and still stand by) The reason they become laws rather than theories, is because they are so concretely proven and 100% consistent with everything we know and understand, that they will never BE falsified.

I apologize for jumping to conclusions due to my bias to read all of your posts as garbage, as I was working under false preconceptions in this case.

The only point I was trying to make is that they are not 100% certain. As it stands, there is very good logic and reasoning FOR them to be considered true and you shouldn't take them lightly and should assume them to be true when working with anything with them.

But you should also not considering them 100% proven. When you take that path it really limits the way you think about things. It's a bit of an insult to science to just go "Well that's true and there is no way it could be proven wrong." Because when you take that path with them then you don't try discovered any new information in regards to them.

In short, I'm mostly saying that you should never consider something 100% true. Because we don't have the understanding necessary to make that judgment. And when we do treat something as 100% true it becomes counter productive to a debate as you will refuse to change you mind and outlook on something because you are not going to consider the possibility that it is wrong.

And philosophical debates have a lot of merit in them even if they don't have a lot of facts and such supporting them as they really help you think abstractly and think about questions that won't have concrete answers in a logical manner.

Isn't this just teaching people good manners?

You again huh? Educate myself? I'm not gonna read all this crap because I know it's just your way of saying "how we should do things". You need to realize that everyone has a right to their own opinion regardless if it is ignorant or not. Once you've realized that maybe we can have an intelligent conversation together.

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I don't have words to describe the colossal stupidity of this post. But I will do my darndest to try. Let's break this shit down.



Yes, me again, and the fact that you would reject information as completely invalid because it comes from a source you dislike speaks volumes of your maturity and intellect.



Yes, preferably extensively. Speaking of educating oneself with derision or proud ignorance is the most disgusting thing I believe someone can say. You should always seek to better yourself, especially when your intelligence is at the shit-tier level that you seem to demonstrate.



Really? You know what I'll say before I say it? What a wonderful ability you have there! ... If you weren't pre-cognizant though, it would appear that your anatomy has been altered so that you can only talk out of your ass.

You are right in one thing though: This is how I think we should do things here in SD. We should be logical and intelligent, two things you seem to not approve of for reasons unknown.



Of course everyone has a right to their own personal opinion, that is not in dispute, regardless of how wrong or just plain stupid those opinions are. My issue is when people try to push those opinions on others as if they were true, and thus they propagate the spread of ignorance and contribute to the intellectual death of others. This forum is for the expression and debate of ideas, and when someone presents ignorant bullshit as valid, and someone accepts it as fact because they do not know better, then they have done something repulsive in their corruption of another's thoughts. THAT is why I posted this. So that people CAN know better than to accept bullshit as logical just because someone said so.

I wish that this was unnecessary. I wish that everyone knew better than to take someone else's word just because others agree with it, or it makes them feel good. But time and time again, people have shown that they are stupid, and thus I come in to tell them this, so that hopefully they can be less stupid in the future. Many users are intelligent enough to not need this thread, but it can never hurt to be more educated.



No. I very much doubt that you could ever have an intelligent conversation with anybody, and if ever there comes a day where you DO have something intelligent to say, I will hope that this thread helped you reach that point. Regardless of what you believe, I did not post this for some ego trip, or to insult the intelligence of others. I posted this because I genuinely believe that the forum will be greatly aided if everyone read and abided by these logical guidelines.

Yeah. I mad.

That chart wins.

Whoever is modding this subforum should apply that chart to any post and whack anyone who deviates from it.

Since this is about educating one's self might as well educate.

Maturity has nothing to do with it.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/maturity

"You should always seek to better yourself"

agreed.

"especially when your intelligence is at the shit-tier level that you seem to demonstrate."

It's called a comment, has nothing to do with intellect, nor will putting a comment down demonstrate intellect.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/comment

"Really? You know what I'll say before I say it? What a wonderful ability you have there! ..."

It's called intuition and yes I do have it as you can see from your post.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/intuition

"two things you seem to not approve of for reasons unknown."

I never said that. Its called an assumption, yeah that's what you and me are doing bud.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/assumption

"My issue is when people try to push those opinions on others as if they were true"

Isn't that what your doing?

"So that people CAN know better than to accept bullshit as logical just because someone said so. "

Everyone has a right to believe what they want. If you want to post this information objectively then I see no problem in that. Keep in mind when giving other people information that you don't put your biased in it as this is not a discussion and all information needs to come from a reliable/professional source.

"Many users are intelligent enough to not need this thread, but it can never hurt to be more educated."

Agreed.

"Regardless of what you believe, I did not post this for some ego trip, or to insult the intelligence of others. I posted this because I genuinely believe that the forum will be greatly aided if everyone read and abided by these logical guidelines."

Guess I should have read this before pming you that nasty comment. That's very good and I like hearing that. It definitely eases me down and changes my opinion of you. But you gotta stop insulting people. I'll admit I was wrong in this post but you need to admit you were wrong in your other post where you completely disregarded my opinion after having asked for it.

Maturity is a state of mind, not age.

Understanding is different from acceptance.

Your mom's vagina smells like fish.

List needs a politics/propaganda paper.

A list of fallacies. Nice.
Pleased to say I knew most of them, but did learn about some others.
Think circular reasoning should be included. It looks stupid in its most basic form, but compound circular reasoning is somewhat subtle and used somewhat often.

Two wrongs do make a right (in math).

It's listed as Begging the question. Unless you mean something else?

@GameOn Suggestions on a good one?

Hmmm i read a few randomly when i was bored that i thought were pretty good but don't remember them now. I mostly just watch doco's and videos because i usually don't have the attention span to read. I could post them?

If you post them and they are good, I'll add them to the main post.

UPDATE: I added a link to TED in the main post. Please visit the site at your leisure, and hopefully learn something.

Yeah that true but you have to do test to determine what is 100% correct and what isn't. ;)