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[MetalSlimeHunt]

Helgo no, the Bavarians are as children, they know not what they do!

[misko27]

I know Helgo, actually. when I was still on a debate team in highschool I remember going up to oppose a fake bill that literally no one sitting in the hall had an objection to, and I remember I was standing there sort of awkwardly fumbling to the reveal (before reading this, realize it occurred before Bernie Sanders became well-known, so there was no risk of me being taken seriously):

"Yeah, you know, this is a good bill, helps small businesses and the workers, but you know it doesn't really get to the root problems of our society."
*Pause, looks at notes as if I don't know exactly what I'm about to do, looks back up at audience*
"The real solution, is to smash capitalism."
*Audience explodes in confusion and laughter, I look back down at my notes*

And then later, someone got up and asked me a question that was more of a long-winded dismantling of my every single 'argument', ending with something like "Does the speaker realize that he is so far from the basic laws of economics?" And my only response was "I'm sorry that you don't understand economics." I still have to laugh at the face on that poor guy, he looked so god-damned outraged.

In that circumstance that was ok, because A) Fake bill, B) everyone already agreed on the main points, and C) it was funny and most people were in on the joke, but it's a style of, um, 'argument' that is used a lot, and in serious contexts.

[SalmonGod]

Seriously. 

Dialogue is important.  People should be engaged in a constructive, honest fashion whenever possible, and in most situations, this is the correct and best thing to do.  Don't take my support for nazi punching as meaning otherwise.

But goddamn are you lucky if you've never encountered someone arguing in bad faith.  When you encounter such a person, know that they have no interest in winning an argument with you.  Their motive is to create as obnoxious a public display as possible, to act as the brightest lighthouse to like-minded people that don't know they have allies and aren't ready to out themselves yet.  It's distracting the opposition while they movement build.  They're collecting IM's in private, while Kefka-laughing their insane troll logic in public.

[sluissa]

The hope is, that the people arguing in bad faith will be the very very very small minority. (And if we're lucky, simply like most trolls on the internet and not actually believing in what they say more than wanting entertainment from their opponent.)

The hope is that most people who follow a given undesirable dogma might simply be misinformed.

If you can reach those people, who won't necessarily be arguing in bad faith but simply have flawed foundations on which their beliefs exist, then that's what matters.

It doesn't matter that you stop everyone from spouting hate, but that you limit the number and the recognition of those spouting hate. Relegate them to the ignored sections of street corners with the "world is ending" doomsayers and the fire and brimstone preachers. Let them be as ridiculous as they care to be.

[Lord Shonus]

The point is that, even if you can't convince somebody who is arguing in bad faith, you CAN convince the people that are listening to him. Challenging his arguments with public dialogue has some chance (often a large chance) of keeping him from "converting" people to his views, while shutting him down only strenghtens his ability to convince. There are few arguments stronger than "the powers that be are afraid of me, and don't want you to hear the Truth."

[Max™]

Feel the need to clarify that I do not support government action against speech, hateful bullshit or not--unless we live in a Laundry Files type world where certain incantations could actually trigger an apocalypse, regulate away--hence "punch" rather than "ban" or "prosecute" to get across the simple idea that maaaaaybe you should choose a different group to endorse in public?

[Dorsidwarf]

The point is that, even if you can't convince somebody who is arguing in bad faith, you CAN convince the people that are listening to him. Challenging his arguments with public dialogue has some chance (often a large chance) of keeping him from "converting" people to his views, while shutting him down only strenghtens his ability to convince. There are few arguments stronger than "the powers that be are afraid of me, and don't want you to hear the Truth."

Yeah but as is constantly seen, challenging the ideas of the kind of people who fall back on "goverment coverup/hushup" will say the same thing about any evidence you try to convince them with.

[wierd]

I am reminded of the "moon landing hoax" people.

You know, the people who insist we never went to the moon?

I have actually confronted one before.  Know what I did? I used a nice reflector telescope, aimed it at one of the landing sites, and let them see the moon rover ruts, and landing stage of the llm they left behind, then casually asked why the us government would carry the hoax so far as to actually spend millions if dollars to send somebody there to tear up the dirt, just to cover up that they had filmed the landing in a sound stage, by actually landing somebody on the moon.  (Then leaned in close, and asked 'unless if course, you believe there is a vast conspiracy with the world's mirror and telescope makers; because there is very little inside this one besides mirrored glass and air.") I suggested that they were better looking and seeing for themselves if something was true or not, than blindly trusting, and that while our government does do some damn shady things, they aren't really in the business of burning piles of money to save a nickel.

I admit I was not wholly successful at winning him out of conspiracy land, but he did have to admit that we had indeed gone to the moon, and I did give him some powerful tools to better see through bullshit with.

Often, we lament that we don't fully convert people. Really, that should not be your goal. It should be to win them over a small, but important amount. Each time they encounter somebody like yourself, that will happen, and they will trend toward truth.

In order to start a dialog to reach that end though, you have to frame arguments inside THEIR framework. That means not being immediately dismissive, and being willing and able to entertain obviously wrong ideas.

[SalmonGod]

Yeah, that comparison makes it really hard for me to believe you understand the type of people I'm talking about.

[wierd]

LOLOLOL.

You have never met my parents, obviously SG.

Mom was the type that just 'absorbed' the art bell show, and dad is an end of the world conspiracy nutter.  I grew up around "those kind" of people.

Both of them were/are bible thumping, right-wing types. Mom at least taught me the value of rational thought, despite her lack of actively applying it herself sometimes, so I dont think I turned out that bad, considering the environment. (I think I already mentioned here on the board at one time the practically 'terrorist training camp' version of love dad provided, so not going there, just bringing it up for reference.)

The type of person you are mentioning, I actually run into often on message boards though.  The kind that arent really interested in a rational debate, and only want to make noise.  You still have to engage them on their own rules though. Just the endgame is not to prove them wrong, but to expose their game. It further rubs salt in their wounds when you let it be known that you actually enjoy a good troll. (Which I really, in fact, do. A good troll can be lots of fun.)  The best trolls, are the ones that know all about the truth, but purposefully present a false, but consistent world view. Rather than try to correct them (because that is useless, they already know the truth, their motive is to get a reaction), it is best to just help them sharpen their game, and let them know straight up that you are on to them, while continuing to play.  (See for instance, the Landover Baptists. Those people are EXACTLY the type of people you are discussing. They not only 1), already know all about actual evolution, scientific inquiry, and are generally highly intelligent people-- they also are very knowledgeable about the Christian bible and dogmas, and purposefully present themselves as an over the top demographic of this latter, and use their knowledge from both sides of the fence to satirize everyone, and everything. Its how they manage to take Poe's law to whole new extremes. They measure each other up by how well they can "play the game", not on actual rightness or wrongness.  You have to be able to appreciate, and play the game to win with them.)

[Trekkin]

I have actually confronted one before.  Know what I did? I used a nice reflector telescope, aimed it at one of the landing sites, and let them see the moon rover ruts, and landing stage of the llm they left behind

How large a telescope did you use, weird? Because I can calculate how many arcseconds wide the LEM descent stages look from the surface of the Earth, and from there how large a telescope would be required to see them as anything more than a dot. Would you like to know how large a telescope that is, weird? How many meters across your reflector would have to be?

Or would you like to go modify your statement somewhat?

[wierd]

This was a fairly large one, but yes, it (LLM lower stage) was not much bigger than a 12pt comma, but still clearly non-natural, and the blast plume around it is much bigger than the lower stage itself. It was sufficient that you could see where the tracks (The rover tracks, that is, just to avoid more frivolous pedantry) were, and could see the blast circle.

As for the size of the reflector itself, it was about 1.5ft across, and 3ft long, with an extended eyepiece. There was a fair amount of atmospheric aberration. Not top of the line, but "nice" for a home telescope.

To "Properly" see the LLM lower stage, you need to go to a professional observatory, but that was not readily available. (you need to schedule time on one of those, and taking time away from serious astronomers is bad form for something so frivolous.) It was also unnecessary. Evidence of man-made features on the moon was more than sufficient, and he accepted what was presented.


Now, is there a *REASON* why you are making absurd requests, asserting that to see a several dozen meter wide blast circle, with a shiny spot in the center, that you need to go to a professional observatory, when this is certainly not the case?

Or-- are you one of those people that insists that something has to be 100% exactly what you imagine, in order to be a true story?

[SalmonGod]

LOLOLOL.

You have never met my parents, obviously SG.

Mom was the type that just 'absorbed' the art bell show, and dad is an end of the world conspiracy nutter.  I grew up around "those kind" of people.

This isn't about conspiracy nutters, though.  Conspiracy nutters are actually invested in the ideas they debate you on.  When they engage you, there is some level of genuine to it, and specificity.

Hate trolls are not the same.  They'll drop all kinds of conspiracy nutter content into the mix, but not because they have any genuine attachment to a specific claim.  Where a conspiracy nutter will use mental gymnastics and selective admission of evidence to cling to their ideas, the hate troll will not commit to any single thought long enough for you to meaningfully criticize it.  They'll drop outrageous claims, bad data, etc the same way a conspiracy nutter would, but abandon them with dismissive, mocking rhetorical tricks like the one Helgo demonstrated as soon as you start to dig into those things.  They'll space them out like bread crumbs to lead you on with mockery dressed as rhetoric in between, and the only common feature of their statements will be the implication of something negative about their target groups.  Their goal isn't to convince anyone of anything.  It's to build up the feeling of the strength of a certain narrative in the public consciousness, and build up confidence in people whose feelings align with that narrative that they can get away with joining in. 

If you engage them at all, they win.  Because passive bystanders who aren't actively following or making a critical thought assessment of the situation just see you getting frustrated and the hate troll jovially firing off power signals.  It's not obvious at a glance that they're empty.  The more passive crowds see this kind of stuff around, the more it builds up the feeling about the narrative in the public consciousness that the hate trolls want people to feel.  People who are actively engaged in a critical manner are generally already against the hate troll and nothing's changing with them.  People whose feelings on the subject already align with this narrative feel increasingly safer about it - to openly express their prejudice and organize with others on that basis.

If you ignore them, they also win.  Allowed to make their noise uncontested, it's only easier for them to control how those who are less invested and don't critically engage feel about the cultural narrative on the subject, and this is most people.  The Overton Window shifts accordingly.  And now not only are they able to find each other and organize, but they can genuinely negotiate politics as well.  We know what happens from there.

Edit:  Ok, I see your later acknowledgement about actual trolls.  That is more like what I'm talking about.

[Trekkin]

This was a fairly large one, but yes, it was not much bigger than a 12pt comma, but still clearly non-natural, and the blast plume around it is much bigger than the lower stage itself. It was sufficient that you could see where the tracks were, and could see the blast circle.

As for the size of the reflector itself, it was about 1.5ft across, and 3ft long, with an extended eyepiece. There was a fair amount of atmospheric aberration. Not top of the line, but "nice" for a home telescope.

To "Properly" see the LLM lower stage, you need to go to a professional observatory, but that was not readily available. (you need to schedule time on one of those, and taking time away from serious astronomers is bad form for something so frivolous.)

I'm afraid this is mathematically impossible, weird. Those descent stages are, for all intents and purposes, 4 meters wide; the landing gear brings that to 9, but they're not substantial enough to really affect the apparent size of the object.

Now, the Moon at perigee is 363,104,000 meters away. That gives us an apparent diameter of 0.002 arcseconds. Per Dawes' limit, R (in arcseconds) = 11.6/D (in cm). 0.002D = 11.6, so D = 5012 cm in order for the telescope in question to have sufficient resolving power.

Your 1.5-foot telescope, on the other hand, cannot resolve two objects that are closer together than 438 meters apart at the closest the Moon ever comes as anything other than a single dot. The "blast plume", as you call it, is nowhere near that big. It and the LM itself would look like a single dot, and the Moon is full of dots.

To "properly" see the LM descent stage from Earth would require a telescope slightly less than five times bigger than the largest optical telescope we currently have available at any professional observatory in the world, wierd. What you describe doing is flatly mathematically impossible.

[wierd]

SG--

Again, when dealing with those that argue in bad faith (they dont actually believe what they are saying or arguing, but have some ulterior motive for making the argument), you have to change tactics.  You cannot make somebody believe something they already believe, through education. (the very idea is nonsense.) Instead, you have to change the direction of argument, to illustrate what their ulterior motive is.

You can do this either overtly, or covertly.

In a public debate, with say-- a political leader-- you need to do this overtly, because the stakes of playing the game are just too high, and you need the public consciousness to be aware of the chicanery.

On an internet forum, without such stakes, (such as one being beset by trolls from Landover Baptist), then covert illustration is in order.  You can do this by dropping your own absurd statements, like "I am safe from god's wrath inside my 1969 Lincoln town car. Judges 1:19 says so."  Such people will *IMMEDIATELY* catch the reference, find it hilarious, and internally acknowledge the good play.



Trekkin:

Dont know what to tell you there guy, since I have myself seen these objects many times with that telescope. Again, the object in question was indeed "a shiny dot", inside a circle about the size of a pencil eraser. (perhaps a little smaller.) The tracks look like a squiggly dark line meandering around the area. I actually use the rover tracks to tune in the site, when I look at it. It is possible I am not seeing what I think I am seeing, but thats another kettle of fish.

Now, back to my question-- why do you feel the need to ask pedantic questions with such hostile intent? If it is to protect some internal bias, I would advise you to discontinue, it wont help you in your life, and will just make you miserable.