OK, listen up ... we desperately need to have a chat, since it's clear that some of you still need some assistance with this whole "The Blogging Tories are a bunch of retards" theme we have going on here at CC HQ.
See, when I send you over to read stuff like, oh, this, it's not because I want you to engage Paul in intellectual dialogue, or attempt to enlighten him in the ways of basic science or even fundamental climatology. No, the reason I refer to you to stuff like that is for the simple pleasure of ridiculing someone who is way stupider and more dishonest than you are. Do you see the difference?
Quite simply, you are not going to educate Paul. He is too much of a moron, which is easy to see if you read that article and the accompanying comments section, after which you can see the way Paul's brain functions, as in:
- Paul will immediately and uncritically swallow whole the most ridiculous piece of pseudo-scientific tripe put in front of him, embracing it whole-heartedly and presenting it as incontrovertible proof of "The Greatest Scientific Scandal of Our Time ", and yet
- Paul will simultaneously demand nothing but the best in terms of scientific rebuttal and opposing evidence, to the point where he sets an impossibly high standard for any and all counter-claims and your evidence is never quite good enough.
See how that works? I mean, if I was being cruel, I could have pointed out that the very paper he is creaming himself over actually references one E.-G. Beck, who was stripped naked and paddled soundly for his ignorance here, thereby driving just one more nail into his hero Zbigniew Jaworowski's coffin. And now that I've pointed that out to you, you might be tempted to rush over to Paul's place and try to set him straight.
Please don't.
As I've already explained, that's not why we're here. You're not going to teach these people anything because they are simply unteachable. There's an old saying: Trying to educate a creationist is like trying to teach a pig to sing -- it's a waste of time, and it annoys the pig. The same applies to the vast majority of Blogging Tories, and the sooner you come to grips with that, the better off we'll be.
Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.
7 comments:
Just out of curiousity, what prompted this gentle admonishment?
Nothing specific, RT -- it's just sad-making to watch genuinely intelligent people get involved in the comments section at some of these places when it's screamingly obvious that it's an utter waste of time.
Yep--been there, done that...
Didn't want the t-shirt
Ditto. It's completely futile attempting to knock any sense into these remarkably obtuse people. I think they actually enjoy being stupid.
Sometimes I indulge just when I'm in a cheery mood and don't mind the tediousness. (I remember how right-wing capitalist fundamentalist creationist libertarian blah blah blah I was myself, so I know there's hope for even the most fervent of them.)
But yeah, I don't do it too often any more. It takes time away from doing something fun and/or really productive in the world.
You've got to admire watching some of them (Dr. Dawg, especially), who are obviously very practiced at exposing fallacies, go to work, but on people like Paul, it gets kind of depression when you realise they're a lot of weasels like him around, who spend far more time confusing the discussion than they do educating themselves.
There's an old saying: Trying to educate a creationist is like trying to teach a pig to sing -- it's a waste of time, and it annoys the pig.
I was reminded of a similar saying: "Don't argue with an idiot; they'll only bring you down to their level and then beat you with experience."
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