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yoda, you're that type of guy that always wins by adversary forfeiting, right?
should i be calling my lawyer?

Except your behavior indicates you do, in two ways:

1) If the truth were not obtainable, you couldn't reasonably express so many confident opinions about what's true.
2) If the truth were not obtainable, there'd be no reason to argue about what's true.
i'm not arguing about what's true or not
i'm arguing my perspective of a situation
what i'm doing is like two guys arguing if the clouds indicate that it's going to rain or not,
one guy says it's not going to rain because the news guy that never misses says it wont,
the other says it goes to because it's indian uncle made a rain dance and he never misses as well,
in the end it snows, and you strike me as the guy that would argue that snow is water, so it rained

I'd love to hear the angle from which "the CDC is lying about its data" is not ridiculous. It's a government entity, and the data spans decades.
you already know what i think about the government, so
for me government have to prove they're telling the trued, not the other way around

Two huge problems with this:

First, as Sedai already pointed out, this includes suicides. My number was homicides.
so what's the problem with suicides? it doesn't matter because it's a harm they did on themselves?
you don't know but you can guess it's hard, even if you're a death adventurous like i call them
a gun is one of the easiest ways for you to commit suicide alongside with poison,
the second one might be harder to get in america (irony)(or not)
and since you see things from all angles (irony)(or not), did you ever considered this:
since health care evolves(irony)(or not), the treatment to gun shots also evolved,
a simple flu was a death sentence, now it takes four days to cure,
that's the same with gun wounds and that obviously has to be acknowledge in your "statistics"
do you fell like searching for attempts of murder? guns related crimes? you might get a surprise

Second: you tried to dismiss the numbers I posted because they were from the Washington Post, presumably just because it's a large numbers (I asked if you knew anything about the Post, and you didn't reply, and I'm going to assume the answer is "no"). So how can you respond by citing an even larger one? How is The Washington Post suspect, but The New York Times isn't?
i didn't even knew what the number were,
didn't knew the washington post was larger, i just did a five minutes google search and that showed up

I don't suppose you've investigated this claim at all? Or understand that corporations don't pay taxes when they lose money, for example?
you either aren't as smart as you might think you are or you're just playing dumb,
you know very well that the today's world "playing with money" is the base of any large corporation,
just moving money around, isn't production, just look to the highest paying positions in those corps,
they're already planning the next financial crash because they're the ones who make it,
just like the big banks, the "too big the fall", they show losses, the tax payers inject money
if the owners of those companies are the richest man's on earth, there companies have losses?
on paper i might believe they have, in reality? doesn't seem legit mate

Credit where its due: I think this is a really thoughtful and mature reply and I really appreciate it. I appreciate the nuance in it.
you're probably thinking: "another. they hate us because they want to be us"
nonetheless, thank you for the acknowledge



Joao just made another great point that may get lost in the shuffle here. There's less gun deaths today because many hospitals have great gunshot/trauma teams, that save many gunshot victims lives. It might interest you Joao to know that we don't really track any of that data. So when guy like me says it doesn't matter if the homicide rate is going down for guns because shootings and not just mass shootings either are way, way up. I can be easily dismissed as nutter because I can't prove my point. But yeah, those stats are nice right? Doesn't it make us all feel better to know that less peeps are dying from guns today? No, not really. We are now living like this today...
__________________
We are both the source of the problem and the solution, yet we do not see ourselves in this light...



i'm not arguing about what's true or not
This, uh...seems like a problem.

To argue is to presuppose that there's a truth, and a truth that might be demonstrated by that arguing. Otherwise there's no point. If your response to inconvenient facts is just to say "who's to say what's true?" then that's the same idea I'm going to throw right back every time you tell me about your perspective. I don't have to refute it, because you've already done it for me by undercutting the idea of truth altogether.

what i'm doing is like two guys arguing if the clouds indicate that it's going to rain or not,
one guy says it's not going to rain because the news guy that never misses says it wont,
the other says it goes to because it's indian uncle made a rain dance and he never misses as well
The problem with this analogy is that the people in it are disagreeing about causes, but not facts. They both agree it's going to rain. The problem we have is that I'm telling you it did rain, and showing you the water on the ground, and you're telling me you don't believe it because the weather report has an ad next to it.

you already know what i think about the government, so
for me government have to prove they're telling the trued, not the other way around
And how would they prove that to you, exactly?

so what's the problem with suicides? it doesn't matter because it's a harm they did on themselves?
It matters very much. It's just a totally separate issue, policy-wise, from gun homicides.

and since you see things from all angles (irony)(or not), did you ever considered this:
since health care evolves(irony)(or not), the treatment to gun shots also evolved,
a simple flu was a death sentence, now it takes four days to cure,
that's the same with gun wounds and that obviously has to be acknowledge in your "statistics"
do you fell like searching for attempts of murder? guns related crimes? you might get a surprise
Sure! I'd love to introduce more facts into the discussion, provided you'll actually agree to acknowledge them if I do. But I'm not going to do more homework if the result is that you'll accept them if you like what they say, but not if you don't.

i didn't even knew what the number were,
didn't knew the washington post was larger, i just did a five minutes google search and that showed up
Good grief! Then why do you trust it, and why did you post it? You dismissed my source just because it came through a newspaper and you only trust "independent" sources, so I specifically asked you for an independent source...so you just Googled the question and posted what you found, without knowing or caring if it was independent? Huh?

you either aren't as smart as you might think you are or you're just playing dumb
you know very well that the today's world "playing with money" is the base of any large corporation,
just moving money around, isn't production, just look to the highest paying positions in those corps,
they're already planning the next financial crash because they're the ones who make it,
just like the big banks, the "too big the fall", they show losses, the tax payers inject money
if the owners of those companies are the richest man's on earth, there companies have losses?
on paper i might believe they have, in reality? doesn't seem legit mate
This is a whole lot of vague "everybody knows" stuff without any actual substance. The idea that businesses should pay tax when they LOSE money is kinda crazy. If you wanna argue that they're not really losing money, you should be prepared to elaborate on how, and how you propose to change that. As opposed to just seeing the image, taking it on faith because it tells you something you already agree with, and tossing your skepticism out the window.

That's kind of the problem: you're not wrong to be skeptical of sources. But if you're only skeptical of the stuff you DON'T agree with, that's not really skepticism.

you're probably thinking: "another. they hate us because they want to be us"
I'm not. America has plenty of problems. But they're not all the ones you think, and some of the things you're saying are just false, sorry to say. And I think it's awfully presumptuous to pretend you know what another place is like based on scattered media reports and basically no effort to find sources or establish facts.

nonetheless, thank you for the acknowledge
I complain about thoughtlessness because I really DO value thoughtfulness, so when I see it, I'll always say so.



Joao just made another great point that may get lost in the shuffle here. There's less gun deaths today because many hospitals have great gunshot/trauma teams, that save many gunshot victims lives. It might interest you Joao to know that we don't really track any of that data.
We do, it's just not tracked as well as it used to be. It sounds difficult to track, presumably because the requirements for tracking injuries and deaths are quite different. Anyway, this seems like a recent problem, so I don't think it presents a big hurdle for the overall long-term downward trend we've been discussing.

So when guy like me says it doesn't matter if the homicide rate is going down for guns because shootings and not just mass shootings either are way, way up. I can be easily dismissed as nutter because I can't prove my point.
You keep saying stuff like "you'll probably think I'm crazy" or "dismissed as nutter," but I don't see anyone saying anything like that. Just asking for data, and for rationales. That's certainly all I'm trying to do.

Same thing here: why do you think it's "way, way up"? People keep expressing skepticism about such a simple statistic, and I keep asking why, and nobody seems to answer. It seems like they just feel it must be wrong. And my theory has been that they're basing it on media coverage, simply because nobody's answering and that's the only thing I can come up with. I'm happy to be corrected on this point.

I don't know what that video is supposed to demonstrate; that people are scared of guns and kind of in a panic about them? Because that seems to fit pretty well with what I'm saying about coverage.



Allow me to summarize my issues/questions with/for both of you:

1) If you believe we can't really know what's going on and you're skeptical of all the reporting you see, fair enough. That allows you to ignore or dismiss things like CDC data. But that logically requires that you also relinquish the ability to contradict the claim or pretend you know what's happening at all. It reduces the entire issue down to guesswork and speculation and doesn't allow for the kind of confidence that people are throwing around about their conclusions.

2) If you believe we can know what's going on, but you believe some sources are trustworthy and others are not, then it's obviously incumbent on you to explain why some are trustworthy (and it has to be better than a newspaper has an ad, and ads automatically mean you're a puppet of corporate America, or whatever) and some are not. And then, from there, it's incumbent on you to provide data from one of those trustworthy sources to support your conclusion. And if you can't, then we're back to point #1, where you're admitting there's no way to know and you're just speculating.



...
* More hate group inspired information and way easier access to it for pretty much everyone on the planet.
I found this article from The New York Times. It seems relevant to what Sedai and others were saying about certain types of media helping to spread hate group messages and spawning (in part) mass shooters.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/04/t...manifesto.html



This, uh...seems like a problem.

To argue is to presuppose that there's a truth, and a truth that might be demonstrated by that arguing. Otherwise there's no point. If your response to inconvenient facts is just to say "who's to say what's true?" then that's the same idea I'm going to throw right back every time you tell me about your perspective. I don't have to refute it, because you've already done it for me by undercutting the idea of truth altogether.
i don't see it as a problem. we just have different ideas to what truth is, or means
you believe in a truths reached by the majority. try to refuse galileu now; flat earth idiot they'll call you
i don't believe any human being can achieve any truths, that's what we're being doing all this time,
from conscious to language we created concepts, ideas, rules, laws, religions, faiths to shape conscience
i give my opinions the same way a musician give his music, i like you to see my picture,
doesn't mean my picture is truth. what makes it truth is a global, majority acceptance, validation? no.
our pictures have influences, and they are different, doesn't mean they're truths, the influences the same

The problem with this analogy is that the people in it are disagreeing about causes, but not facts. They both agree it's going to rain. The problem we have is that I'm telling you it did rain, and showing you the water on the ground, and you're telling me you don't believe it because the weather report has an ad next to it.
they aren't both agreeing that's going to rain, one thinks it is going to rain, the other thinks it's not going,
but my point was, even, (hypothetical here) you considering snow water and rain, you'd be correct,
because like i said, was one way to look at it, was it not?
well, if i didn't saw the raining how could i know that water didn't came from something else?
but i see your point in all this, you're based on fact, that you believe to be true, and me just discrediting

And how would they prove that to you, exactly?
prove is like trust. how do you know you can trust someone? actually it isn't, but okay
if we're talking about countries, it would be a good start by taking care of those they can't profit from

It matters very much. It's just a totally separate issue, policy-wise, from gun homicides.
do you believe me when i tell you i didn't even knew what we're talking about until sedai?
i'm putting in question all guns, didn't really knew was only about homicides.
i believe mass shootings depend mostly on control and regulation and not on the gun itself,
i'm saying this taking in consideration banning all guns is out of question

Sure! I'd love to introduce more facts into the discussion, provided you'll actually agree to acknowledge them if I do. But I'm not going to do more homework if the result is that you'll accept them if you like what they say, but not if you don't.
my mother always ask me: why do you put everything in question?
why don't you trust anyone? why do you always see the worst in people?
honestly, i don't make an effort, my brain simply connect dots and makes a picture
you'd be great to make a nice picture all the time, but normally does the worst,
doesn't mean i'm unhappy, you know why? i don't give much importance to the picture i make,
the same goes to the dots, my skepticism came when i placed the dots in question

Good grief! Then why do you trust it, and why did you post it? You dismissed my source just because it came through a newspaper and you only trust "independent" sources, so I specifically asked you for an independent source...so you just Googled the question and posted what you found, without knowing or caring if it was independent? Huh?
i don't trust it, that's why i didn't read it. i was hooping it would refuse your idea and you'd move on

This is a whole lot of vague "everybody knows" stuff without any actual substance. The idea that businesses should pay tax when they LOSE money is kinda crazy. If you wanna argue that they're not really losing money, you should be prepared to elaborate on how, and how you propose to change that. As opposed to just seeing the image, taking it on faith because it tells you something you already agree with, and tossing your skepticism out the window.
agree, that was vague, but my boss was always behind me and i had to think fast and write faster,
agree also, business shouldn't pay taxes if they've lost money, business, we're talking corporations,
i don't believe amazon lose money, if that's what you're asking me,
i don't believe most huge corporations out there lose money if that's what you're asking me,
and if the conversation goes that far, post the ones that did and i'll make an search just for you

That's kind of the problem: you're not wrong to be skeptical of sources. But if you're only skeptical of the stuff you DON'T agree with, that's not really skepticism.
my disagreement was created because of the sources i've been reading, the same as you and everyone,
the famous quotation on digests, newspapers and magazines i've posted before

I'm not. America has plenty of problems. But they're not all the ones you think, and some of the things you're saying are just false, sorry to say. And I think it's awfully presumptuous to pretend you know what another place is like based on scattered media reports and basically no effort to find sources or establish facts.
so tell me, how did you form your opinions? did you suffer from injustices? probably not, it was the media

I complain about thoughtlessness because I really DO value thoughtfulness, so when I see it, I'll always say so.
no, it wasn't thoughtfulness you give value back there, was honesty, or what appeared to be honesty,
obviously thoughtfulness is a way to reach honesty if we're talking about discussions, arguing's



i don't see it as a problem. we just have different ideas to what truth is, or means
I don't think we do. We already have words like "opinion" or "perspective" for things that aren't clear or don't have simple true/false values. "Truth" means something else. Truth, by definition, is a quality that transcends opinion.

you believe in a truths reached by the majority.
No I don't.

i don't believe any human being can achieve any truths, that's what we're being doing all this time
Then why argue at all? Anything you say I can just say "no such thing as real truth!" and blow it off, and everyone can just go on believing whatever they want. It's pointless.

i give my opinions the same way a musician give his music, i like you to see my picture,
doesn't mean my picture is truth, what makes it truth is a global, majority acceptance, validation,
at least is what i think i understood about your belief, and most people believe that to be correct
our pictures have influences, and they are different, doesn't mean they're truths, the influences the same
You think "X number of people died to firearms over this time period" is an equivalent statement to "I like heavy metal"? Really?

prove is like trust. how do you know you can trust someone?
if we're talking about countries, it would be a good start by taking care of those they can't profit from
You're saying if the United States took better care of poor people you'd start believing its homicide statistics?

do you believe me when i tell you i didn't even knew what we're talking about until sedai?
Yes.

i'm putting in question all guns, didn't really knew was only about homicides.
I mean, I said homicides. It's a little bothersome that you're disagreeing with things you're not reading.

my mother always ask me: why do you put everything in question?
why don't you trust anyone? why do you always see the worst in people?
honestly, i don't make an effort, my brain simply connect dots and makes a picture
you'd be great to make a nice picture all the time, but normally does the worst,
doesn't mean i'm unhappy, you know why? i don't give much importance to the picture i make,
the same goes to the dots, my skepticism came when i placed the dots in question
I don't understand the point of this. I didn't ask you why you were a skeptical person, and I'm not questioning skepticism in general. To the contrary, I admire it as a default posture. But, in my experience, people who talk about their skepticism like this are not actually skeptical. They're just skeptical of some things. They defend the idea of skepticism so they can dismiss certain ideas or facts, but then somehow they have strong opinions on those same issues.

i don't trust it, that's why i didn't read it. i was hooping it would refuse your idea and you'd move on
What on earth are you talking about? I asked you for an independent source that shows gun violence is getting worse. You're saying you don't have one, so you just Googled some random thing to make me leave you alone about it?

agree, that was vague, but my boss was always behind me and i had to think fast and write faster
Fair enough, but you don't have to respond fast. I'd much rather wait a bit longer for a clearer response.

agree also, business shouldn't pay taxes if they've lost money, business, we're talking corporations,
i don't believe amazon lose money, if that's what you're asking me,
i don't believe most huge corporations out there lose money if that's what you're asking me,
and if the conversation goes that far, post the ones that did and i'll make an search just for you
Again, not nuts about doing homework if you're just going to tell me "oh, they're lying" any time I bother. Which is what I'm pretty sure is going to happen.

my disagreement was created because of the sources i've been reading, the same as you and everyone
What sources? You say things like "independent sources" but you don't actually cite any or name any. Every time I ask you for specifics, you reply with general statements about your life philosophy.

so tell me, how did you form your opinions? did you suffer from injustices?
Like any reasonable person, I attempt to ascertain truth through both data and experience. I try to prioritize data because it's actually very unreliable to try to extrapolate truths about hundreds of millions of people, in all sorts of different circumstances, from my own narrow life experience.

I also don't understand your question about injustices or what relevance you think it has towards forming these opinions. Are you saying that if someone is the victim of gun violence, that gives them a sense of how prevalent it is over an entire country?

no, it wasn't thoughtfulness you give value back there, was honesty, or what appeared to be honesty
Those are not mutually exclusive. Just because you honestly believe a thing, doesn't mean it's not thoughtless. And yeah, I think having lots of strong negative opinions about a country you don't live in and haven't even bothered researching much is a fairly thoughtless and unfair thing.



yoda, this will be my last post about this discussion, arguing, what ever...
it will be because, even so i understand your view, i don't believe you're trying to understand mine

I don't think we do. We already have words like "opinion" or "perspective" for things that aren't clear or don't have simple true/false values. "Truth" means something else. Truth, by definition, is a quality that transcends opinion.
i've already talked about this in the last post, you didn't get it, won't really elaborate much more about it.
you have the same certainties people who persecuted galileu had, he challenged common belief.
the only diference is that people back then called it the "truth of god" and that got ridiculous over the time,
but if you think harder, we're doing the exact same thing "both" quoting infallible sources, how smart...
and before you start again, no i'm not comparing myself galileu with my "life philosophies" like you call it

Then why argue at all? Anything you say I can just say "no such thing as real truth!" and blow it off, and everyone can just go on believing whatever they want. It's pointless.
that's exactly the point, don't you see?
the only thing i can help you with, is exactly not solving anything, postpone any resolution or any beliefs you might have on achieving a truth, if you do that i'll not close any doors to the future, any person that believes he reached a truth he doesn't care about what comes after, the other aspect is when someone believes he reached a truth he wants to do exactly what i under-marked in your comment, he wants everyone to reach his truth, and the next thing you know, with a little power his starting a dictatorship to obligate everyone reaching his truth. that's been the history of some religions and beliefs around history. that's the insanity people reach when they believe they have some truth.

You think "X number of people died to firearms over this time period" is an equivalent statement to "I like heavy metal"? Really?
you choose not to understand and pick up peaces and place them at the wrong place to make a point,
that's one of the reasons i don't see a point in continuing this discussion.
what i was trying to say was why am i talking with you here, the why man

You're saying if the United States took better care of poor people you'd start believing its homicide statistics?
i didn't said poor and i spoke globally, and that's because countries take advantage of poor people,
won't really dig much into it because i believe i'd have to reply once again.

I mean, I said homicides. It's a little bothersome that you're disagreeing with things you're not reading.
you twist things to your advantage in hilarious ways. you know how this started?
it started with a famous reddit picture that i posted, are actually the guys words.
i didn't even looked at the statistics, because they don't matter to me,
they're statistics made by one of probably many agencies or newspapers,
and like i easily pointed before, they can be easily answered to if someones think hard,
if i wanted to play your game i'd say you didn't answer to that either, but it's not my point

I don't understand the point of this. I didn't ask you why you were a skeptical person, and I'm not questioning skepticism in general. To the contrary, I admire it as a default posture. But, in my experience, people who talk about their skepticism like this are not actually skeptical. They're just skeptical of some things. They defend the idea of skepticism so they can dismiss certain ideas or facts, but then somehow they have strong opinions on those same issues.
i might agree with you. maybe you have more experience than me, who knows right?

What on earth are you talking about? I asked you for an independent source that shows gun violence is getting worse. You're saying you don't have one, so you just Googled some random thing to make me leave you alone about it?
if i posted a independent source you'd probably dismiss it because it's not an official one,
i tried my luck with your newspapers for you to cut the subject and focus on the fundamental thing,
that quite honestly it's what i've been trying to do all along, try to focus on how do we formulate ideas,
if you had understood that, or chosen to understand this could have been a great discussion

Fair enough, but you don't have to respond fast. I'd much rather wait a bit longer for a clearer response.
fast is good, is what you're really thinking without thinking what other's will think.
you're not who you think you are, you are not who i think you are, you are what you think i think you are.
don't remember exactly you said it, charlie kaufman maybe, google it if you find it interesting

Again, not nuts about doing homework if you're just going to tell me "oh, they're lying" any time I bother. Which is what I'm pretty sure is going to happen.
i agreed with you on the part i shouldn't have said: "everyone knows", as nothing to do with homework

What sources? You say things like "independent sources" but you don't actually cite any or name any. Every time I ask you for specifics, you reply with general statements about your life philosophy.
i've talked about democracy now!, the intercept not that long ago.

Like any reasonable person, I attempt to ascertain truth through both data and experience. I try to prioritize data because it's actually very unreliable to try to extrapolate truths about hundreds of millions of people, in all sorts of different circumstances, from my own narrow life experience.
again, okay, i understand, that's what an academic should do, or what they call them?
what about thinking a little bit further that as been where i'm trying to get.
because i've been saying the same thing over and over about data, info, newspapers... i'm tired.
i thought i'd start there and move forward, it didn't happen.

I also don't understand your question about injustices or what relevance you think it has towards forming these opinions. Are you saying that if someone is the victim of gun violence, that gives them a sense of how prevalent it is over an entire country?
if you didn't cut the word "media" in the end of my comment like you've been doing, you'd be easier
but just to be as vague, no i don't think that and you probably know it

Those are not mutually exclusive. Just because you honestly believe a thing, doesn't mean it's not thoughtless. And yeah, I think having lots of strong negative opinions about a country you don't live in and haven't even bothered researching much is a fairly thoughtless and unfair thing.
not they're not mutually exclusive, neither i said it were, you just understood that,
for me to explain it we would have to have an all conversation about honesty,
it would have started with that quote above, about how we see ourselves.
you're saying i didn't research because my research goes against your's, and it was a meme, come on.

even this gif you can twist if you want to, but i don't mind. you're smart, thanks for the time



while your on it, don't forget to buy things at walmart people, there family, the walton's, worth 191 billions and there fortune grows 90 millions per-day, 39 billions just last year, and that's what they tell us.




yoda, this will be my last post about this discussion, arguing, what ever...
it will be because, even so i understand your view, i don't believe you're trying to understand mine
Please don't confuse my not agreeing with you with not understanding you. I think I understand fine. And to whatever degree I don't, I've asked lots of fair, simple questions about your position to give you the opportunity to explain. Unfortunately you've mostly chosen not to explain, but to respond with general philosophical leanings and head-scratching analogies.

you have the same certainties people who persecuted galileu had, he challenged common belief.
the only diference is that people back then called it the "truth of god" and that got ridiculous over the time,
but if you think harder, we're doing the exact same thing "both" quoting infallible sources, how smart...
and before you start again, no i'm not comparing myself galileu with my "life philosophies" like you call it
No, but you're obviously comparing me to the people who persecuted him, which is silly. And mostly backwards, since that was a case of someone arguing for objective truth and others arguing against it, so I'm not so sure you'd be Galileo in this analogy, anyway.

that's exactly the point, don't you see?
the only thing i can help you with, is exactly not solving anything, postpone any resolution or any beliefs you might have on achieving a truth, if you do that i'll not close any doors to the future, any person that believes he reached a truth he doesn't care about what comes after, the other aspect is when someone believes he reached a truth he wants to do exactly what i under-marked in your comment, he wants everyone to reach his truth, and the next thing you know, with a little power his starting a dictatorship to obligate everyone reaching his truth. that's been the history of some religions and beliefs around history. that's the insanity people reach when they believe they have some truth.
Saying believing in truth can lead to dictatorship is like saying a drink of water can lead to drowning. Sure, obviously someone can be TOO SURE they've found the truth, but thinking you have does not obligate you to stop examining more beliefs.

More importantly, thinking you don't have the truth (which is reasonable) isn't the same as thinking there is no truth. That's an important distinction.

None of this changes the point I've been making over and over, however: if you want to say there's no truth, fine. But if you think that, then the act of argumentation makes no sense, and neither does having opinions with any real conviction, either. Saying there's no truth doesn't just invalidate my claims, it invalidates yours, too. It's a very short-sighted argument because it inherently undercuts even itself.

you choose not to understand and pick up peaces and place them at the wrong place to make a point,
that's one of the reasons i don't see a point in continuing this discussion.
what i was trying to say was why am i talking with you here, the why man
No, I understand just fine. I'm simply using a rhetorical question to demonstrate that it's not a good comparison.

i didn't said poor and i spoke globally, and that's because countries take advantage of poor people,
won't really dig much into it because i believe i'd have to reply once again.
Well, yeah, you would, because it's another example of responding to a simple question with a hazy non-sequitur. I asked you what it would take for you to believe government statistics, and you've suggested you might if they took care of poor people.

you twist things to your advantage in hilarious ways.
How is it "twisting" things to point out that you're disagreeing with stuff you're not reading?

it started with a famous reddit picture that i posted, are actually the guys words.
i didn't even looked at the statistics, because they don't matter to me,
they're statistics made by one of probably many agencies or newspapers,
and like i easily pointed before, they can be easily answered to if someones think hard,
if i wanted to play your game i'd say you didn't answer to that either, but it's not my point
The fact that you didn't look at the statistics is the whole point, dude. You say you don't think I'm trying to understand you, but at the same time you admit to not really reading or caring about what I'm saying, and not even looking at the things you're replying with.

i might agree with you. maybe you have more experience than me, who knows right?
I don't really understand how experience relates to it. I'm pointing out that there appears to be a double standard here: skepticism about some things, but not others. Genuinely skeptical people don't pick and choose what to be skeptical of. And if they're not evenhanded, they're MORE skeptical of the things they want to believe or already believe, because we're all human and need to counteract our natural desire to interrogate other ideas more than our own.

if i posted a independent source you'd probably dismiss it because it's not an official one
Yeah, wouldn't that be lame, if you dug up a source and someone dismissed it out of hand? I wonder what that's like.

Look, you said you trust independent sources, so I've asked for independent sources with information on gun violence. It's a really simple, relevant request, and after like five replies I haven't gotten anywhere with it. Which makes me think these opinions aren't really based in anything other than exactly what I suggested from the beginning: anecdotal media coverage.

i tried my luck with your newspapers for you to cut the subject and focus on the fundamental thing
"Tried your luck"? You Googled something, didn't read it, and then posted it without realizing or caring it was talking about something else. You basically just threw a random link at me to get me off your back. You didn't make any serious attempt at understanding what I was saying or trying to communicate with me at all. It's a little insulting, frankly.

that quite honestly it's what i've been trying to do all along, try to focus on how do we formulate ideas,
if you had understood that, or chosen to understand this could have been a great discussion
It still can be, but great discussions involve give and take, not just making a bunch of claims and then following them up with vague philosophy when someone asks about them.

fast is good, is what you're really thinking without thinking what other's will think.
It's also what people think before they've really had time to consider something properly. The problems we're talking about are not things people just know in the moment, they're hard problems that require serious thought. Those kinds of things are not better off-the-cuff.

i've talked about democracy now!, the intercept not that long ago.
Alright. What do they have to say about gun violence?

but just to be as vague, no i don't think that and you probably know it
I literally have no idea what else you could mean. Please stop accusing me of trying to misunderstand you. There is a language barrier, and you have a very stream-of-consciousness style of responding. Both make it very difficult to understand what you're saying. I'm not upset about that, and I'm happy to take the time to try to figure it out, so long as you don't act like it's my fault when I don't.

for me to explain it we would have to have an all conversation about honesty,
it would have started with that quote above, about how we see ourselves.
you're saying i didn't research because my research goes against your's, and it was a meme, come on.
We haven't been talking about the meme for quite awhile now. You obviously said all sorts of other things after that. You didn't just post a meme and then get hit with a bunch of questions. You said many, many accusatory things, I took issue with one or two, and it went from there.



Saying there's no truth doesn't just invalidate my claims, it invalidates yours, too.
guess you understood some things about what i'm trying to paint here.
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doing some effort not to answer most of the things you said, because it's more twists, but it'll worth,
i'd probably arrive at the same destination again, so, why bother?
but you got some of the picture in your upper quotation.



The thing is, I'm not sure you understand the implications of that.

If you wanna throw up your hands and say "who knows what's true?" that's the kind of philosophical axiom I can't really argue with. Frankly I wish more people were closer to that position, most of the time. But that's not what you're doing. You're expressing all sorts of very strong opinions, and you're even arguing with others about them...it's only when they argue back that we get all "what is truth anyway?" Which seems a little convenient.

I have zero issue with it if you want to say none of this stuff is really knowable. But I don't see how that belief is consistent with all the stuff you posted initially, which is conspicuously missing that kind of epistemological humility.



You ready? You look ready.
Yeah, but humans are not wired to operate that way. You can easily say there’s no arrival at truth and assert a strong claim at the same time. We certainly have the ability to rise above this trait, yes, but I think most of humanity has had an affinity for speaking about things as if they were truth.
__________________
"This is that human freedom, which all boast that they possess, and which consists solely in the fact, that men are conscious of their own desire, but are ignorant of the causes whereby that desire has been determined." -Baruch Spinoza



I mean, we're "not wired to operate that way" in the sense that we're wired to behave in irrational ways sometimes, especially when we're worked up about something, but it's not a good thing. And it's a fair thing to note when that manifests itself in telling people on the Internet what's wrong with their beliefs or country.



You ready? You look ready.
I’d say it’s one of the best things about being human. That propensity for madness. It is part of what has driven us. I mean, people connected globally with screens of information. That’s just insane, yo!



Heh. I'd make a distinction between madness in the "dream big" sense, which is awesome, and genuine/literal irrationality, in the "these two things are logically inconistent" sense.

Creativity and logic may not marry very well, but there's nothing inherently at odds about them.



You ready? You look ready.
I’d wager some of the greatest inventions were derived from logical incoherency. I’d have to think about it for a moment but I’m trying to rip a bandaid off my leg right now, so all I know right now is pain.



I'm not sure how we could determine that, but I don't think it matters. Whatever the merits of unconventional or irrational thinking in total (though it's worth noting that to be tangibly useful, they have to become coherent/rational at some point), obviously it's a problem in argumentation. If someone wants to say otherwise, well, then I need not refute them, since their own position allows me whatever degree of irrationality I like.

Good luck with the band-aid. Oof.