re: #299 Feline Fearless Leader

I don’t think they’re posting to look for truth. They’re looking for feedback reinforcement of their prejudices. Thus the efficiency of the echo chamber (and retweeting of the same misinformation) since they hear a lot more voices agreeing with them than a few that are saying, “Wait a minute, that’s not accurate.”

I got burnt out on this a long time ago. Too many “rational” discussions where as you won points they retreated to the next point, and so forth, until they suddenly retreated right back to the first point (again). At that point you realize that they were not going to sway from the general viewpoint based on any evidence you offered and that you were wasting your time with them. (Unless you’d paid your five pounds of course.)

my much-too-extensive experience of this was instructive in some way, although i’m not sure how exactly except perhaps as a sociological or psychoanalytic exercise

generally, i discovered that a lot of people seem to have read those web pages on common logical fallacies and mistaken them for guidelines for “debate”