People make me sad

[Baconeggcheese]

So a lil while back I made a thread asking for help finding non-political media nonsense info on climate change and got a bunch of good responses and began to scratch the surface on educating myself about the science behind it.

I originally made said thread because I frequently talk to my stepfather about current events and we were debating it and I realized that I was hardly educated enough about the subject to feel comfortable debating anything about it. So now I have this really basic understanding of it, and my stepfather hands me this newspaper article about "climate conformity" and its simply some extreme left wing news guy got fired because he made some extreme article opposing climate change.

Now my stepfather handed this to me saying he knows I like looking into this stuff so I was under the impression it was about climate change, but no it was just about partisan nonsense. He literally handed this to me to be able to say later *LOOK AT HOW EXTREME THESE PEOPLE ON THE LEFT ARE, THEY FIRED THEIR OWN GUY FOR DISAGREEING WITH THEM!* and somehow he felt this justified his views.

I then proceeded to have yet another one of these conversations about the subject where I tried to educate him about what I had learned doing what research into it I have and he mostly ignored everything I had to say. I'd given him the benefit of the doubt for such a long time that he didn't "drink the koolaid" but man I've finally come to terms with the fact that he literally gets all of his information from news / media and is more concerned with what party its affiliated with than the actual information its referring to.

Sigh... I dunno what I'm trying to get out of this thread I just felt like ranting about how disappointed I am in that there's actually people like this who take everything they get from news / media at face value and will argue with someone who tried to educate themselves beyond media using anecdotes and media spin.

TLDR: My stepfather who I thought attempted to educate himself on things actually gets all his information from the media and I've come to accept that and it makes me sad. Now I keep thinking of this image:

[Deleted]

Well water isn't 2 parts of hydrogen and 1 part oxygen, it's pretty absurd, even if you like to keep it simplistic, then hydrogen is like 8 times lighter than oxygen which means water consists of 1/4 hydrogen, 3/4 oxygen.

[Baladash]

this is relevant and useful and I don't leave home without it:

[Baracuda]

Your stepfather is a typical person :/

[ro9ue]

this is relevant and useful and I don't leave home without it:

Lol nice. Could've used that in like 90% of the threads on this forum.

[Frogguh]

I'm still trying to get beyond the irony of someone talking about how they try to educate themselves and then posts a Sam Harris quote. You can find atheists who aren't complete dumbasses if you really must quote one...though I don't think you can find an anti theist who isn't a dumbass. I have yet to encounter one anyway.

[Baladash]

Lol nice. Could've used that in like 90% of the threads on this forum.

why do you think my post count is so low?

[Dezerte]

I feel similarly. If the person I'm arguing with doesn't value either of those, then I feel helpless.

Though I never think "they are so stupid", I rather chalk it up to me not being persuasive enough.

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I'm still trying to get beyond the irony of someone talking about how they try to educate themselves and then posts a Sam Harris quote. You can find atheists who aren't complete dumbasses if you really must quote one...though I don't think you can find an anti theist who isn't a dumbass. I have yet to encounter one anyway.

Well, how would you argue then? (What is water made of?) How would you present this argument?

[Senathor]

People that put a TL;DR at the end are awesome. A lot of people just suck. If you think about it everything kinda sucks. That's life.

[Nirawen]

though I don't think you can find an anti theist who isn't a dumbass. I have yet to encounter one anyway.

Depends on the context, I think being outwardly against organised religion is fine but being against peoples freedom to believe in a deity isn't fine.

[Vermicious]

If people didn't suck, we wouldn't be having this discussion

That being said, the good thing is that not all people suck, it's just that you seem to encounter the sucky ones way too often.

[Lorien]

Well water isn't 2 parts of hydrogen and 1 part oxygen, it's pretty absurd, even if you like to keep it simplistic, then hydrogen is like 8 times lighter than oxygen which means water consists of 1/4 hydrogen, 3/4 oxygen.

Saved me the trouble.

Even with scientific values, who can validate their own findings? What is evidence? Correlation vs. causation can be difficult to decide. Documentation can still be thin or fabricated. Within the right circles, any old guy that can save up enough credibility to get published can go about things with inherent bias. You'd have to personally accompany the person in their research, as well as look into the validation processes behind the manufacturing of their tools and so forth. Where would it end? Otherwise, everything is filtered through people, and articles and other information must be read with a certain amount of discernment and good faith. It takes consistent reports from different sources over years of research to really validate findings. That's why they are called theories.

As you get older, you'll find it easier to just leave these people you spoke of alone and go about living, cherishing the things you enjoy and making decisions for yourself. Don't get too caught up in it.

[Baconeggcheese]

I'm still trying to get beyond the irony of someone talking about how they try to educate themselves and then posts a Sam Harris quote. You can find atheists who aren't complete dumbasses if you really must quote one...though I don't think you can find an anti theist who isn't a dumbass. I have yet to encounter one anyway.

Don't know anything about sam harris tbh, but the quote by itself outside of whatever context he may have originally said it is far from dumb. A dumb person can have a smart moment.

@bala: lul saving that one.

[Frogguh]

You likely haven't looked very hard or are excluding them on the very basis of being anti-theist.

Being an anti theist does seem to usually correspond to the inability to see in anything other than black and white. And I've debated them since about 2004 so I've had plenty of examples to form this impression.

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I feel similarly. If the person I'm arguing with doesn't value either of those, then I feel helpless.

Though I never think "they are so stupid", I rather chalk it up to me not being persuasive enough.

- - - Updated - - -



Well, how would you argue then? (What is water made of?) How would you present this argument?

I don't know if the quote is part of a larger point and only talking about composition, but I certainly don't think of it as two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. I think of it as what I drink when I am thirsty, or what I use to shower. I couldn't care less about the scientific definition. I don't care if water was eighteen parts gold and forty six parts helium, so long as I can quench my thirst and be clean.

[Dezerte]

I don't know if the quote is part of a larger point and only talking about composition, but I certainly don't think of it as two parts hydrogen and one part oxygen. I think of it as what I drink when I am thirsty, or what I use to shower. I couldn't care less about the scientific definition. I don't care if water was eighteen parts gold and forty six parts helium, so long as I can quench my thirst and be clean.

So your issue is more with the person behind the quote, rather than the quote itself then?

[Venant]

I happened to be in a waiting room the other day and somebody had turned on a certain TV channel (the one that rhymes with 'tox'), and I was pretty impressed by the level of sheer propaganda that was being dished out. Within half an hour I had learned that we invaded Iraq because of 9/11, the EPA is evil, the Bush administration actually won the Iraq war by 2005, Obama is secretly dismantling the US military, and that Obama caused Benghazi. I completely agree that the left is also guilty of pushing their own agenda, but to shrug it off by saying 'yeah but both sides do it' (in their respective 'main stream') is false equivalency.

A significant portion of our population is literally being programmed to believe in a reality which is demonstrably different from what can be proven by facts and rationality.

[Saxtorph]

this is relevant and useful and I don't leave home without it:

The entirety of all no flying and cash shop threads in the first box and line to the right. Well done.

OT: You are right to be sad about it. This is one of the many why our country is in the state that it's in. Nobody reads, considers other viewpoints or thinks critically about anything anymore.

[May90]

All people get a lot of their opinions and beliefs from random sources. You say your dad gets his info from newspapers and the like, but you yourself got a lot of information you now use every second in your life from your parents, from the society you live in, from the books you read, etc. Even the point that you are making - that only science is that matters on this topic and everything else is a BS - came not from your logical thinking, but rather from the education you got where you were told multiple times that science is above everything else. Such is human being: if we were to analyze every bit of information we receive before approving or disproving it, no one would ever be able to learn how to walk or how to speak.

You don't seem to be different from your father though. You say that you only have a basic understanding of how all of this works, and yet you try to "educate" your father? Following your logic about "science is all that matters", you don't have right to say a single word on the subject before you, at least, have got 20-30 years of experience working exclusively in the field of climate science. Just as your father's points seem laughable to you, your points will seem laughable to a PhD student in climate science, and his points will seem laughable to Nobel winners working in this field. So, in the end, no one can say anything about anything, unless he/she is the top scientist in the world - and yet even he/she cannot say much since he/she is far below the level when we can make any actual predictions (remember, predictions of climate change has never worked well so far, so...).

Everyone chooses his/her sources of information and also has a lot of sources he/she doesn't consciously choose. Your father prefer newspapers, it is his business. He is not "right" or "wrong", he just made his choice. You choose different sources of information. Just choose whatever you like and go for it, don't mind other people's business. Otherwise you are in for a LOT of frustrations in your life since everyone does something that you would consider stupid.

I happened to be in a waiting room the other day and somebody had turned on a certain TV channel (the one that rhymes with 'tox'), and I was pretty impressed by the level of sheer propaganda that was being dished out. Within half an hour I had learned that we invaded Iraq because of 9/11, the EPA is evil, the Bush administration actually won the Iraq war by 2005, Obama is secretly dismantling the US military, and that Obama caused Benghazi. I completely agree that the left is also guilty of pushing their own agenda, but to shrug it off by saying 'yeah but both sides do it' (in their respective 'main stream') is false equivalency.

A significant portion of our population is literally being programmed to believe in a reality which is demonstrably different from what can be proven by facts and rationality.

It is not a propaganda, it is just what gets people emotional. People want to hear about terrible plots of their leaders, about how their nation is evil and is doomed, this kind of stuff. It doesn't mean that all they say is true, it just means it is what people want to believe.

I personally never watch or read any kinds of news. Well, when something major happens, I know about this of course from my friends or someone else, but I would refrain from watching TV news because their primary purpose is not the information delivery, but rather entertainment.

[Phookah]

I'm still trying to get beyond the irony of someone talking about how they try to educate themselves and then posts a Sam Harris quote. You can find atheists who aren't complete dumbasses if you really must quote one...though I don't think you can find an anti theist who isn't a dumbass. I have yet to encounter one anyway.

Yeah Sam Harris that neuroscientist that went to Stanford, what a dumb ass.
The irony of you complaining about people bettering themselves while simultaneously looking like an idiot
Hilarious

[Saxtorph]

A discussion can be a simple exchange of ideas. There's no requirement that one or both people engaging in the discussion be open to changing their views on the subject for it to be a discussion.

I call it pointless bickering. Little kids yelling at each other demanding that their way is the right way.