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are all together too angry and bitter for your own good.

well, most of you anyway.

How can you have a decent conversation when you hang from each others throats like rabid badgers?


Its uncivilized.


Put down the bats and machetes, stop screaming, raving like lunatics, and foaming at the mouth. "ahhhahhhh I am riiiight agree with meeee now you crazzyyyy f*ck!! !!!1"


...relax... let your blood pressure stabilize...


No one likes to listen to insane crazy angry idiot people. You make the people who disagree with you not want to be insane like you... and you make the people who would normally agree with you embarrassed to be associated with you.

Last edited by Shiggily on 04 Jan 2009, 7:03 am, edited 1 time in total.

It's good that you spoke up about this.

I used to think it was just me.

its why I stopped adhering to any position. Vocally at least. Both sides are filled with psychopaths. During the election I wouldn't even tell people if I was democrat or republican and who I would vote for (If I was back in the States).

Adhering to positions is why we're here. It's why we post on WrongPlanet. I keep coming back because I enjoy all the lively discussion and debate, even if it means putting up with the negativity. I try not to become a part of that negativity myself, but I'm only human.

nonsense. I am here for the intellectual discussion. Which does not require me to take a position at all.

No it doesn't, although you may want to.

sometimes I do. Usually I prefer to flit back and forth... challenging both sides. Which makes both sides dislike me.

Sorry supreme being who is clearly above all of us.

Shiggily has a point.

Krem has one too. The fact of the matter seems to be that Shiggily is passing a judgment upon this entire group.

As for her point, well... this is the debate section of WP. Debaters will likely be angrier because they are concerned with their arguments, and given that part of the purpose of a debate often is, not to gently persuade, but rather to coerce someone to agree through force of logic and this kind of effort will have people thinking the other side is being somewhat dishonest with them. Bitterness is just something I think is part of WP's nature, as I don't think that the same level would be necessary, but I do think that a group of people who are relatively cast out of society will tend to have this tendency.

In any case, I do think that Shiggily is being too harsh. Most people here seem to be sane and relatively acceptable as these things go, I mean, debate groups will usually tend to have some meanness, so I don't think this is that bad.

The problem usually becomes intense over emotional issues such as animal rights and morals in general and religion where personal feelings are very strong and there is little logic in defending a strongly held emotional position with little concrete evidence to back it up.

Often. Not always. And it's not necessary. Many of us would like to be at or near the top of the intellectual totem pole. The majority, and I don't think aspie or NT makes any difference to that, try to reach the top by winning arguments, by beating others down. It seems often the winning is more important than being right, and the worst possible error is to think that someone who disagrees could be right.

An alternative approach, unfortunately only used by a minority, is to redefine what it means to be at the top of the intellectual food chain and to say it is ability and willingness to improve and learn. That changes the focus from trying to destroy the other's arguments to trying to find something worthwhile in them. That approach can be difficult to sustain when encountering someone only interested in winning, as I found out here a year ago. I still did learn something useful from that debate: how far I still fall short of the standards I aim for. And that the only thing you can do is to drop the argument and give those people the last word. They'll have it anyway, even if you waste a significant portion of your time on trying to reason with them.


Intellectual dishonesty often is part of the "win the argument at all costs" approach.


True, but understanding this is not the same as saying this is right. And I can think of several WP members who respect other people as much as any non-aspie I ever met.


Perhaps I've led too sheltered a life, perhaps it's because no other discussion group I read deals with politics and religion, but PPR is the worst I've seen. I would also find it more enjoyable with less aggression.

this forum would've been dead boring if it wasn't for all the over-zealous weirdos, myself included

I don't think that the first approach is an incorrect approach. It is hard to win an argument and be absolutely wrong, and although some debating skills might be needed to win an argument versus just blunt knowledge on the topic, debating skills are necessary to fully understand the different views on a given topic anyway. To be honest, I think the attitude "the worst possible error is to think that someone who disagrees could be right." is not fully dependent upon the style of debate, it is possible to debate to attack an opponent and think they could be right, but your position still has to be that they are wrong, and the fact of that position holds whether or not you are in debate with them.

The big issue with your redefinition is that I think it is wrong. The top of the intellectual food chain is not dependent upon personal qualities, but rather it is based upon intellectual ability, and this is a fact in life. A doctor in a subject might be closed minded to ideas other than his own, but his word will carry more weight than a very open-minded, adaptive high school student, we can debate whether this makes for good epistemology, but most people would agree with such a notion. In any case, the attempt to destroy an opponent's arguments *forces* you to come to terms with their arguments. If you cannot grasp the argument, then you cannot destroy it, thus in the long-term, adaptive and improving minds will tend to have an advantage in winning arguments. Of course, I might be missing something in what you are saying, and I know that I am not immune to failings, but I do think this method is generally stronger than other methods.


It can be, but often intellectual dishonesty isn't the full-scope of the problem. Part of the issue is also that people naturally seem to have a difficult time understanding those who disagree with them, and also that some people do not communicate as well as others or have thought processes as easy to follow by some. Problems like this can be hard to overcome, but I do think that a debate format can help, by both upholding basic foundations of knowledge, and providing incentive to try to understand an opposition(debunking it).


I never said that this is right, but I am not going to judge people for their natures. If you are a bitter person in life, I don't see why you can't be a bitter person on WP. In any case, I think respecting ideas is more important than respecting other people.


I think it is the lack of relevant reference groups. PPR is actually tamer than some of the discussion groups I've seen on the same topic, by quite a bit in some cases. Looking towards non PPR-topics won't really help give context though, given that I think these problems are somewhat inherent with the subjects rather than board related.

Hence the shift in my sig and pic. Breaking the clean consistency I had before was rough.

keep up the good work