Why interact on an even playing field? Just make like 15 accounts and convince them they have a neurological disorder like a normal human being.

Well then they have a PhD of course. In polar bears.

That's fucking idiotic. It's basically formalizing the whole "Whoever talks loudest and proudest wins" instead of "Whoever has the most valid and factual argument wins"

The entirety of the alt right playbook is such a good series

You’ve put a long form version of a theory I also have been thinking of: we need to do better for future generations by teaching and actually supporting critical thinking skills. I’ll also add empathy, which supports critical thinking and is not always hard wired in every human brain. Both are skills, much like emotional regulation and resilience. Personally, I would have benefited greatly by learning critical thinking and interpersonal skills at the age of 16 vs. whatever ‘algebra’ is supposed to be.

Essentially, and TLDR: We need to teach young developing minds how to think, not what to think. We can do even better by teaching said minds that while we are not defined by our thoughts, we have much to learn by observing them instead.

Exactly that, one bullshit goes into circulation, it spreads everywhere strengthening its flawed position. And just like it was said, facts dont even matter at that point - requiring a novel approach to disprove it.

No they are me

Ruts in thinking. Fox News has given them the tools to win any argument with little effort on their part... Any person attempting to provide a sound argument is flooded with BS and gives up... Which they consider a win.

I honestly have no idea, but I suppose it could be the lead. My own mother is bonkers and is starting to remind me of the crazy old mother from Requiem for a Dream.

This is what lead me to question my own faith: just someone asking honest questions with real curiosity

Keep it mind it can take years for those seeds to bloom from doubt to realisation

I was trying to relax in the sauna, so I didn't want to get into it. Which is part of the problem with preaching like that!

It hurts man. Especially knowing that the road I took has crumbled behind me, like in those old Looney Tunes cartoons where someone redraws the road lines to lead people off a cliff. Everything at a user level online feels like an infomercial. All of it has that veneer of being fake and cheap, trying to sell you something while pretending not to.

I haven't got the time or the energy to argue against your point. 😶

Yeah that was me, and now I made you suffer with me! Mahahahaaa!

But to be honest I found the whole thing quite entertaining. It's a puzzle working out what the hell he believes, because he doesn't actually have the level of awareness and understanding to state his position clearly. So every conversation he has on this it's five levels of back-and-forth before he reveals that actually he thinks that, in working out an expression like a(b+c) the very first thing you must do is apply the distributive property to turn it into (ab+ac), because he has got it in his head that the term "multiplication" only applies to multiplication with an explicit symbol like a×b, and if there is no symbol he thinks it's completely different. Hence when order-of-operations rules say "multiplication" after "brackets" he thinks that does not apply to the aforementioned case. And then his lack of awareness comes in, because it's not just that he doesn't realise he's wrong; he doesn't even realise that nobody else is doing it that way.

I'm still not completely convinced he's not a troll, but his dedication across platforms* to this one topic, and his lack of versatility as regards trolling on other topics, pushes it onto the side of sincerity.

*I googled his username and have seen him push this line on GitHub, math.stackexchange, and Mastodon - where he also has pet topics about how 0.999... ≠ 1 and how Cantor's theorem on the uncountability of the reals is wrong because, get this: infinite sets don't exist - both of these being more entertaining but worse in terms of disinformation

I once found usenet messages from my granny in web archive - probably long lost now (she was already dead when I found them, and they were at least a decade old then - she was the tech-savviest granny I ever knew). She was engaged in a fierce debate about religion, so telling people they're wrong on the internet must run in the family.

I don't care what idiots think, I enjoy not having to see their thoughts.

If I've blocked someone and they're commenting on something I've said... I don't care what idiots think.

See I enjoy arguments, they can be productive and interesting, but I don't enjoy arguments with people who are not honest with themselves, argue in bad faith, people who are either deliberately putting words in your mouth, or end up doing it because they are insistently ignorant.

As have mine many times. But there are certainly many people for whom learning something new is not in the cards as they have failed to learn so many other things in their life that they've come to some sort of dead end where they think they know everything yet know nothing useful to intelligent conversation.

Thats good. I just learn shallow stupid stuff on here myself. Top topics are memes, big tech dystopian stuff and Trumps daily shocking statements.

For me its not important if the community is convinced. :) I always make my own decisions in life and sometimes its against what the community thinks.

Yeah sure, but it has no hope of changing any opinions. But I agree. It can be a fun activity anyway to pass time.

Same here, actually that is still a thing. The day after Obama won in 2008 I came to work you would’ve thought a second 9/11 had happened. People were legitimately depressed and in raged by it.