Political Threads and Forum Behavior

This is why I tend to stay away from political, philosophical, and religious discussions - inevitably someone will say those who disagree are ignoring the "simple fact" or the "simple truth", and yet there is no way they can verify that 'truth' or 'fact'. I know a lot of gamers and their intelligence and knowledge of world events would put some esteemed scholars to shame. As to any discourse on a gaming forum - they're not elucidating on a writer's forum where posts and writing overall are expected to be self-edited (and even on writer's forums one has to scratch one's head at the apparent lack of communication skills). It's like looking at text messaging and saying those folks are ignorant of grammar.

 

Here's the list for things to consider when evaluating medical research. Many of the principles apply to evaluating other scientific research:

The point is, just because there is bad science out there does not mean scientific evidence can be found to support any position. The US courts and the news media unfortunately do not understand this basic principle of critical thinking and the scientific process.

This is a different issue than evaluating scientific evidence, research and claims.

You are making a false equivalency charge, however, by just saying if a source has a political leaning or agenda they are therefore equally unreliable. Fox News has been exposed as a purposeful propaganda outlet for Rupert Murdoch. He didn't deny it.

A source like HuffPo may very well publish more articles and op eds that support Progressive causes. But that's quite different from fabricating and distorting facts that end up on the Fox News broadcasts.

 

Maybe intelligence was the wrong word choice. I think of things like grammar, spelling, respect and maturity as well as overall knowledge of our world including a good portion of science, math, geography and government.

A writer is someone who generally has an above-average vocabulary and above-average English skill. Most writers read more than they write, so they are exposed to greater amounts of ideas and knowledge than someone using a virtual shotgun or saving a digital princess. Writers will be more verbose and be able to communicate their ideas better and tend to have ideas that are outside the box, so to speak.

You could put the top authors in the world in a room with the top video gamers in the world and I think you would have a stark difference in many areas. Granted, all the authors could be jerks and the gamers might be awesome to go have a beer with, but I'm talking about writers having a greater ability to have a mature, respectful and thoughtful debate.

 

There are a lot of writers with whom it would be great fun to have a beer. And simultaneously engage in respectful and thoughtful debate.

 

See? It's partisan claims like this that derail most political threads. Crazy claims that conservative news sites are full of lies and liberal ones are full of truth is what turns a lot of people off.

I specifically admitted that conservative sites are just as unreliable as liberal ones, and yet my gesture is met with partisan rancor.

Well, I tried.

 

You are ignoring dozens of variables and therefore drawing a faulty conclusion. Just to name a few off the top of my head:

Average ages in each group
The number of people who are ESL speakers in each group
The collective math and computer skills in each group
The common forum language used by each group with each other

How can you judge "mature, respectful and thoughtful debate" unless you control for these variables?

 

I would say that very few of those apply to evaluating other fields of scientific research. Mainly, it has to do with the quality of the journal.

 

I'm sorry, but I can't have a conversation if people don't understand or aren't willing to understand statistics.

When I say the words 'generally' or even 'majority' I am saying that there are those that buck the trend, but taken as a big giant glob of human, there are certain overall characteristics.

This is the same argument as, 'My grandfather smoked two packs of cigarettes a day and he lived to be a hundred! Your argument is invalid!'

 

Not if they were debating WOW... Gamers kick their asses dude!

 

or maybe that's stoners... or maybe stoned gamers... they'd be crap at gaming... worse at quantum mechanics... or maybe they'd be enlightened in physics... let's test...

 

I was trying to make a light, fun post. Never mind. I'll bow out now.

 

My statement about false equivalency stands whether you dislike it or not.

If you wanted to debate this point, which is now getting off topic so maybe another thread is called for, you'd need to show that HuffPo or some of the other standard Progressive news sources were equally dishonest as Fox News is. Just saying a source has a political leaning does not equate to purposeful dishonestly. Fox's and Murdoch's purposeful dishonestly is well documented.

Conflating purposeful opinion with purposeful deceit is a false equivalency.

Fox Nation vs. Reality: The Fox News Community's Assault On Truth

Some specific examples from the book

FoxNewsLies.net

Fox News' Newest Dishonest Chart: Immigration Enforcement

Fox News Fabricates Criticism Of Obama In Analysis Of Declining Wages


There is no shortage of sources of very specific examples for this claim.

 

No thanks, Ginger. I respect your entrenched viewpoint and decline further discussion.

You're right, it is getting off topic.

 

Well I could make a new list but that one was already made.

The reputation of the journal matters. I imagine there are fake journals in other fields like there are in medical fields.

My being familiar with Ben Goldacre's work showing the positive bias peer reviewed published medical research makes me wonder what other fields that may be a problem in.

Some things are basic: published peer reviewed, repeatability and the size of the study, corroborating evidence from other fields, the funding source when there's an industry agenda like second hand smoke and global warming.

The basics are critical thinking skills and media literacy.

 

I thought it was funny.

 

How did this turn into a discussion of whether gamers as a group are more or less 'intelligent' than 'writers?' lol

I'm both, and Video Games to me are just another way of taking in a good story. There are plenty of writers who write trash, no one can debate that. Any large group shares one thing in common, it's made up of people... and people are inconsistent and vary wildly. And they are also susceptible to group think that can taint attempts to classify them. The same person can be perfectly grammatically correct on one forum and a total slob who butchers the english language on another, depending on what's appropriate in each context.



But, it seems to me that there are a few people here who actually enjoy bashing heads with each other...

That's not necessarily a bad thing, but when it starts to get hostile, it taints the community as a whole. Newer members see that and say, "oh, so that's how it is here... Alright, I'll throw my hat in the ring."

And, while this is a fairly large community, we all still know each other here. It's hard to go from having an all out debate in one thread to a civil conversation in another without some residual animosity leaking over. And, I really don't want to have to start ignoring people... that just seems like an easy way out that avoids the real problem. That real problem, it seems to me, as that a lot of people seem to think that it's okay to be sarcastic in their responses.

Sarcasm kills civil discussion. It makes an attack on the other person. It might be subtle and not exactly deserving of a report always, but sarcasm causes bad feelings and incites retaliation. If you can't conduct a discussion without resorting to sarcasm, then you shouldn't be involved in the first place.

 

Some people decided to argue with me because I said:

"The fact that we are writers makes us more intelligent and thought-provoking than if we were say, a video game forum."

Some people just like to play the devils advocate.

 

Wow, that's some hubris there.

 

Ah, Hubris...

How you plague us writers with strong opinions on every subject that we feel compelled to share!

 

It's good that you're being more specific here, but, after controlling for age, I still don't see any evidence that writers excel at these things more than gamers.

This is a stretch. A great many writers do not have above-average vocabularies or English skills. No offense to members here, but a great many of us on this forum are no better than average in these respects. Yet we all call ourselves writers.

Don't assume that writers do nothing but read and write, and that gamers do nothing but play games. I'm not a gamer, but I know a few, and they're sharp-minded people who read quite a lot. Whether or not the writers who read a lot are "exposed to greater amounts of ideas and knowledge" depends on what they're reading, and on what the gamers you're comparing them to are reading. Many writers might not get much benefit from their reading if they're drunk or stoned, and we all know that many writers have had alcohol and drug addictions. I'm sure the same can be said for many gamers. I'm just saying that you perceive an advantage for writers over gamers here that they might not actually have.

As I said above, writers are a self-selected group. There's nothing about calling oneself a writer that grants one greater powers of communication or outside-the-box thinking. It seems that when you say "writer," you mean only the top tier of writers.

This discussion of writers vs. gamers began when you compared this forum to an unspecified video game forum. Now you want to restrict the discussion to the "top authors in the world." No offense to any members here, but we are not the top authors in the world. Besides, do you mean the bestselling authors in the world? If yes, I doubt they're notably more intelligent or better informed than the top gamers, or even their own readers. Or did you mean the top authors in terms of critical respect and prizes? If that's the group you mean, you're very probably right. But again, we here in this forum do not fit into that group.

Also, if we're talking about having debates with well-informed people (as we were, when all this started), then it's unfair to compare the top writers (in terms of writing ability, acclaim, prizes, etc.) with the top gamers (in terms of high scores in games). It's fair to compare those writers with the gamers who are best informed about the debate topics. In that case, I think you'd likely find that group of gamers to be entirely worthy debate opponents. I wouldn't sell them short.

 

No hubris here. People took a small comment from a larger statement and decided to run with it. You think these people didn't understand the concept behind the comment? Of course they did but they chose to debate the claim rather then cede the spirit of the claim.

 

I was referring to the assumption we didn't really have our own opinions we were merely playing devil's advocates against his.

And from the looks of the post above this one, he doesn't get it that people do actually disagree with his premise. I'll repeat my argument though history suggests if it was ignored earlier it will be again.

You are ignoring dozens of variables and therefore drawing a faulty conclusion. Just to name a few off the top of my head:

Average ages in each group
The number of people who are ESL speakers in each group
The collective math and computer skills in each group
The common forum language used by each group with each other

How can you judge "mature, respectful and thoughtful debate" unless you control for these variables?​

 

God this is tiring. Fine, you win I was wrong okay? Is that what you want to hear? That 100 competent writers would have the same intelligence as 100 Call of Duty players? Fine, everyone is equally intelligent across the board.

Utterly rediculous. Seriously.

 

I don't think that's the point... The point is that you made a generalization that was flawed, knew it, and then stuck to it.

And then... Call of Duty players should not be held representative of the gaming community! People who play CoD aren't all annoying 13 year old racists... but those are the one's who wear mics usually. There are plenty of other video games that require more, and foster, intelligence. Look at EVE online, where the players have constructed an entire functioning economy from scratch? Or Minecraft where servers full of people have collaborated to recreate the wonders of the world--and design some of their own--out of what is essentially virtual lego blocks. Take a look at a Starcraft tournament and you'll see some of the brightest and quickest thinking tacticians in the world. To take a game like CoD and say that those players are all representative of the gaming community at large is kind of insulting.

Even just lumping the Gaming community into one is ignorant of how many different kinds of people play, and what kinds of games there are. If you had said a CoD forum, I would most likely agree with you, because I know what a lot of the people who play that are like, and there is a high percentage of idiots. That's not to say there aren't intelligent people... but it just seems like they are outnumbered.

But to take the whole gaming community? No, that doesn't work.

 

It's pointless to argue. I made a generalization that, on average, is correct. If you choose to cite examples of exceptions, it only proves that you don't understand statistics and probability, which is fine.

I never took age out of the equation. In fact, age was a part of the equation in my initial statement.

My thought was we as writers would be able to have a mature, thoughtful, expansive discussion on polarizing subjects better than a forum full of the average video-game players. That's it and that's 100% accurate.

Competent, active writers are smarter, on average, than active video game players.

This comes from decades of first-hand experience. Granted, I don't have a scientific research grant to test the IQ's of a random sample of video gamers against a random sample of competent writers, but we don't really need one.

I just find it very frustrating that you all completely avoid my point to spend hours debating this insignificant example. You don't concede one inch an it feels like you all purposefully target me for no other purpose than your own enjoyment.