I want stars back.
Poll: Curious how many will agree with a statement I found in an OP-ED
- Thread starter Murph
- Start Date
Actually I have an ulterior motive for the poll. I've been spending a lot of time lately reading anti-centric blogs and op-ed's, I'm trying to build a database of counters for the 99% of pure nonsense anti's use to validated their assertions. I've noticed a trait in many of their articles, comments, and blogs. They are quite fond of massive linking, and if your response to their claim lacks a link, ostensibly validating your comment, most commenter's either blow you off, or attack your non-sourced opinion for being an opinion.
As counters I'm trying to find or create pages I can use as counter-links. And yes, I understand talking about this biases the poll, but after some of the krap I've seen lately, I just said bolt it.
I can't say which bugs me the most, the lies or the slimy manipulation. I guess manipulation probably more than lies.
Lies can be (theoretically) refuted with facts, the difficulty involved repairing the damage caused by the sabotage of 'critical thinking' skills takes the misdeed to a whole 'nother level.
Case in point (paraphrased for numbers, but the structure is the same).
Website puts up a page devoted to trashing defensive carry, and asserts that defensive carry is useless in stopping mass murderers.
As proof it presents a year long study of mass murder, which found 50 different mass murder incidents in the last 50 years that were not stopped by a private citizen engaged in defensive carry.
Their conclusion, based on their collected data, was that in all 50 cases of mass murder that were not stopped by an armed citizen, an armed citizen failed to stop the mass murder
Therefore their study proves armed citizens are useless in preventing mass murders, because in 100% of the mass murders they included in their study, armed citizens failed to prevent the mass murder every single time
Therefore defensive carry has been 'proven' to be useless, so lets ban assault rifles and handguns.
AND PEOPLE ARE REFERENCING THE PAGE TO SUPPORT ARGUMENTS FOR BANNING GUNS!!!
So now, you not only have to make sure your assertions are honest and correct. You also have to worry about how much cognitive dissonance has infected the party(s) you are attempting to communicate with.
You not only have to find and present the truth, you have to defend the concept that truth itself is a valid metric for rational analyse and reasonable discourse!!!
So that is the story behind this poll=)
I'm thinking about a different poll question. Hopefully I'll get the process right this try=)
It has been pointed out that even here at the OSA forum, some readers may not understand what I mean by truth, or truth as predictive power.
If this describes you, I recommend this parable from Eliezer Yudkowsky.
http://yudkowsky.net/rational/the-simple-truth
Tenacious bastages.
I understand your point, I think, and your phrasing is probably better than that 4 different options I finally went with.
I found coming up with the actual poll questions surprisingly difficult, I wanted questions that would not only generate a noticeable statistical difference in respondents, and to be understandable to a non-gun person as well. Even after going with the 4 I chose, I'm still not happy with the phrasing.
In the original op-ed Nicky says,
...I dropped by a gun market where I was offered grenade launchers, machine guns, antitank mines, and even an anti-aircraft weapon. Yep, an N.R.A. dream! No pesky regulators. Just terrorism and a minor civil war.
I recognized the libellous insult on the first read through, but only recently did I think to generate and document an explicit opposing viewpoint.
More thoughts
First there in the conflation, of Yeman, where a gun market is the place you can go to buy rockets and tanks, grenades and missiles which for convenience I'll classify as Heavy Weapons.
To America, where a gun market means a gun show or a gun store. These are the places you can go to and buy guns. Rifles, shotgun, handguns, ammo, shooting accessories and other miscellaneous items. The kind of ordnance for sell at Nichy's gun market are unavailable. Heck, you can't even buy a full auto firearm or a suppressor in the U.S. without obtaining special documents.
Second we have the assertion that the N.R.A. dreams about an anything goes market. This statement is demonstrably false. I challenge anyone to point to any statements or literature from the N.R.A. fantasizing
about the unrestricted sale of Heavy Weapons.
Third we have the assertion that not only does the N.R.A. dream about the sale of Heavy Weapons, but they don't care if it takes a civil war to make their dream a reality.
So in a few short sentences we have gone from a munitions market located in Yemen, essentially a failed state with a few oligarchies scrambling for power, who's citizens still subscribe to 'ethnic' divisions at the tribal level. Who have spent the majority of their history killing each other over ethnic and/or religious and/or political and/or economic issues
.
Compared to the United States, who's citizens continue to reject the formation of a socialist/fascist/progressive State Authority in favour of individual liberty and self-rule.
Which is a nightmare for Nicky and his fellow travellers who's reification of The State and the states Power are like the accounts I've only read about in the books of George Orwell. Well there, but also in historical and sometimes contemporary reports from and/or about the USSR, Nazi Germany, Cuba, Communist China, Bosnia, Rwanda, Imperial Japan, Serbia, Yeman....
One last thing favour is identified as misspelled if spelled 'favor' by the spell checker bot that checks my posts. Is this internal to my pc, or my OSA account?
Have you stopped beating your wife? Answer yes or no.
Absolute control of the questions makes the answers meaningless.
Absolute control of the questions makes the answers meaningless.
Stupidest...Poll...Ever... 
