Geez, my name came up in four different instances already in this thread. I guess I need to lighten up.
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Geez, my name came up in four different instances already in this thread. I guess I need to lighten up.
Point taken.While I do enjoy your posts and rebuttals, even the point by point break and analysis, sometimes you just have to let things go man. It's just not worth it and overanalyzing points in a thread, that doesn't really convey the whole of the other persons opinion, is counterproductive.
I'm personally quite demotivated by posting in those threads as I can't really convey my thoughts without writing an essay. It takes up too much time and then when I reread it I think "What will this post achieve? Nothing, so delete!"
Something I've noticed in other places - and I think this may be part of why your name comes up - is that any kind of direct reply to something is often going to be taken as argumentative. I get "in trouble" in some work-related communities because I've gotten into the habit of vocalizing observations, and those observations are taken as being criticisms even when I don't mean them to be. I've been given a label of being argumentative, despite not wanting to argue - I just want to continue the conversation, keep deconstructing what we're there to deconstruct, etc. It's difficult to portray intention or tone via text. I like to think most of the time, I get where you're coming from with the walls of text and don't take it as an attack or argument every time. I've learned a fair bit from some of those walls o' text.Point taken.
Something I've noticed in other places - and I think this may be part of why your name comes up - is that any kind of direct reply to something is often going to be taken as argumentative.
I end up having to take calculated risks as to whether or not I can voice my opinion anywhere- and whenever I do, I tend to get PM'd by people after the fact saying they agreed but didn't want to say anything where they could also get chewed out for disagreeing with the swarm, leaving it to just be me against a community.
But I do think it's funny that a point-by-point breakdown is kind of exactly what you would expect from a mathematician, which I believe is @bostjan 's education or occupation. I think there's even some jokes along these lines.
On SSO or the other places? That's crazy.
Overlooking 30+ pages of pointless debate is how new posts are made.
Both, for sure. Moreso in other places than here though. Things can get safely political here, but there's some slack communities tied into work where there's often a lot of heated and valuable discussion, but I have to watch what I say so as not to put my employment at risk. I trust my workplace enough that I think they can separate a persons work from their political opinions, but I don't want to be *that guy* in the office whose political leanings don't fit with the general vibe of the office. And I have some circles of friends that lean very heavily in very different directions. Some extremely liberal circles, some very conservative ones. But I hate those labels, they offer such a shallow view into what people really believe.On SSO or the other places? That's crazy.
But I do think it's funny that a point-by-point breakdown is kind of exactly what you would expect from a mathematician, which I believe is @bostjan 's education or occupation. I think there's even some jokes along these lines.
I guess it becomes a question of "is it worth it to make the arguement?". And most of the time it's not. I can gladly let people live their lives whatever way they want to, believing whatever they want to, knowing that it doesn't really matter in the long run, even if I strongly disagree with some element of it. Some friends and coworkers are all heavily into feminism and other kinds of activism, and everything is about inclusion and intersecionalism and all of that kind of stuff, which is something that..... I don't always think super highly of, despite thinking that they have the best of intentions. Not that I think inclusion is bad, or I have something against women, but I think so much activism is misguided and ignores the reality of some situations in favor of trying to make everyone "feel good" about things.
I struggle with that, too.Point taken.
I do wish we had more honest-to-god conservatives here,
There are some who are convinced this is exactly where we're headed. I can't say I think that's true per se (in the sense of trying to predict the future with any accuracy), but I also can't really say it's not a possibility.That's not to say that we're heading toward another Hitler or Mussolini or Hirohito
I think a lot of post-modern debate centers around us-vs-them mentality, i.e., if two people don't agree 100% on a subject, they must disagree overall. I deal with this a lot professionally, as well, where someone has the right idea, but due to a line of reasoning that I cannot follow. At work, I have to make sure I understand how it works and also why it needs to work a certain way, because if it breaks, the customer is going to be calling me first, and if it isn't broken, but isn't doing what the customer wants it to do, the customer is going to call me under the same pretense, and I have to be able to solve both problems equally effectively or else our products don't make it through beta testing. I have no problem killing a project because the thing we supplied simply doesn't solve the customer's problem in the first place, but I have to be able to explain that to an executive who's attention span for me is exactly three power point slides or ninety second, whichever comes first.
So, in the current political climate, you have Trump, who, I think, for most people, really represents Anti-Clinton. That's why whataboutism is such a big thing, it's not so much a distraction as it is that people want to see everything as good vs. evil, so if you are anti-this-one-particular-thing, then you must be pro-everything-else-I-don't-like. This erosion of the political middleground, not just in the USA, but all over the world, is exactly the crap that was going on during the 1930's. That's not to say that we're heading toward another Hitler or Mussolini or Hirohito, but we are headed toward a culture of cult-of-personality political leaders and unbridled nationalism, which is like storing your dynamite above the kitchen stove.