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Kil
Evil Skeptic
USA
13477 Posts |
Posted - 10/16/2009 : 10:54:10 [Permalink]
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Dude:
I'm just saying that you are blinded by political bias on some things, and you leave critical thinking/skepticism behind on those occasions. |
And I'm saying again, that's bullshit. Either that or you better start making that charge against every liberal who posts on this board. I would be the first to say, and I have many times even up to the point of advocating removing the political folder, (don’t worry, it’s too popular and it will not be removed) that with all the critical thinking in the world, what we are left with, and that includes you, on matters dealing with politics, is mostly opinion.
Me:
This really was an anti-Bush prize. And so what? Who can blame them? |
Dude:
Doesn't have a speculative ring to it. More like you are assigning them a motivation out of your personal political bias, and you are stating it in terms that don't even remotely indicate it is speculation. |
I’ll give you that I shouldn’t have said; “This really was.” But since the committee has acknowledged the change in direction in US rhetoric, and hopefully policy, and that change was voiced by Obama himself when he said on more than one occasion that the US will be “moving away from the policies of the recent past,” leaving very little room for doubt about who's policies he was moving us away from, it’s not unreasonable to consider, even strongly, that at least in part this award is a referendum on the Bush policy toward the world community, which I have already explained and have already presented evidence for by way of committee members own words.
Yeah, I hated Bush, but so did they. What I am speculating on is not some giant leap of logic because I have a bias. Considering the words of some of the committee members, it’s a very reasonable speculation.
The bias is coming from you and your disdain for those who identify as liberal or progressive. You fancy yourself an objective observer by claiming independence, but as long as you have ideas about how you think things should be, you are not without bias either. I recognize my bias, as I have acknowledged many times, and I work to not let it taint my ability to think before I post. I have found flaws in my own thinking. I have had them pointed out to me. I am smart enough to not dig in just for the sake of winning a debate. I have yet to see that kind of admission from you.
But then, since you have anointed yourself as the keeper of purity in critical thinking, and have raised the rules of critical thinking to a fucking dogma, what you do is nit-pick beyond all reason, while still thinking that you are the rational one. It's because of that, you will not back down. Perhaps you have admitted on these boards that you were mistaken about something, but I can’t think of when you ever did. Maybe evidence smacked you in the face once or twice. But as long as there is any amount of wiggle room, as in the above disagreement, you will not back down.
Of course, I don't consider you completely irrational either.
Now, I'm done with this stupid argument.
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Uncertainty may make you uncomfortable. Certainty makes you ridiculous.
Why not question something for a change?
Genetic Literacy Project |
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Dude
SFN Die Hard
USA
6891 Posts |
 Posted - 10/16/2009 : 11:12:57 [Permalink]
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I acknowledge errors on my part here all the time. FFS, when I first joined this forum Dave_W crushed (rightly so) a couple of things I was wrong about (pharma profit, liberal media bias, to name just two). I've learned a lot from the people here (even you Kil).
Politics is almost all opinion, and that is the problem. Opinion is bullshit when an issue impacts anyone other than yourself. Politics should be grounded in evidence and fact. Just take anthropogenic climate change as an example. How many people really think it is a hoax? And why? Because politics is tainted by opinion and bias.
On a skeptics forum you'd think there would be some effort to mitigate the effects of that. I'm all in favor of a politics folder, and I'm just as guilty as anyone of posting opinion based statements in this folder, but the left and right wing nuttery that has people inventing motivations for the Nobel committee is a step to far.
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Ignorance is preferable to error; and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing, than he who believes what is wrong.
-- Thomas Jefferson
"god :: the last refuge of a man with no answers and no argument." - G. Carlin
Hope, n.
The handmaiden of desperation; the opiate of despair; the illegible signpost on the road to perdition. ~~ da filth |
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Nobel Prize and Obama
