Smorgasboarding: Pros and Cons

Brandmeister wrote: ajqtrz wrote: I suspect that all others who may have taken offense have done so out of frustration more than offense given. I've come to realize that some people are unable to engage in civil discussion without engaging in personal attacks and when one presents a determined resistance one usually encounters the undisciplined debaters out there. Where others have taken offense, it is due to the asymmetry of your attitude. When they encounter your "determined resistance", you demand that it be considered as a proper concept; when you encounter the determined resistance of others, you accuse them of intellectual laziness or blindly supporting the status quo. When others ignore facts you present, it is a great crime; when you ignore facts that contradict your views, it is of no consequence. Snide comments against you are ad hominem attacks; your own snide remarks are par for the course. You cannot demand full courtesy of others and extend so little yourself. You cannot claim to support the free exchange of ideas on this forum, and then shout down opposing viewpoints in enormous walls of text. To do so is hypocrisy. While you may stubbornly persist in the belief that you are the only person in Illyriad who can properly debate, the growing intolerance towards you on these forums stems not from the merit of your ideas, but by your dogged refusal to measure your own arguments by the same standard to which you would hold everyone else.

Hmmmm.....please do define "courtesy" since, for the most part I find myself quite courteous.  But perhaps I am wrong?  Do lay out what comments I've expressed in a discourteous manner and I'll quickly and humbly apologize.

As for "snide comments," I suspect that sometimes I do move in that direction.  If so, do also point them out and we'll all be better able to remove them from our lexicon of debating styles.  On the other hand, I also know that sometimes what I write only sounds snide because people assume I don't believe it.  Sarcasm is often mistaken for truth but just as often a statement of truth is assumed to be nothing more than sarcasm.

And to clarify, statements about my intelligence, wordiness, motivations, qualifications, hypocracy, etc....are ad hominem remarks as they are "to the man" rather than to the question at hand.  If I have attacked somebody in that manner then I was wrong.  Do let me know of those failings as well.  Wouldn't want to set a bad example.

As for extending courtesy, it is quite easy to do to even those who engage in ad hominem remarks.  I do it all the time. 

And finally, when you say that I "accuse them of intellectual laziness or blindly supporting the status quo," I can only ask two things: are they intellectually lazy supporting the status quo?" And, where, exactly did I say they are "intellectually lazy?"  I may have suggested a certain line of reasoning suggests that as a cause of the conclusion, but I don't remember having said anybody was actually "intellectually lazy" even I may have thought they were.  If I did, I am sorry.  It will not happen again.

And thank you for your comments, they were most "incite-full."

AJ


Edited by ajqtrz - 20 Jun 2015 at 22:05