HOW TO ARGUE The reason for this is that without a common language, no one makes sense to anyone. For one person to say, "Well this proves..." when using a different definition of "proves" means the debate will end in flaming. Logic, definitions, rationality etc. cannot eliminate all fallacy, but they can make it clear to an educated audience what is more likely correct and what is more likely fallacious. Here, then, are some useful sites: http://www.saint-andre.com/ismbook/ism3.html http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/ http://people.hofstra.edu/faculty/St...ogicintro.html http://www.scism.sbu.ac.uk/inmandw/t...gic/intro.html http://logic.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/ http://www.infidels.org/news/atheism/logic.html http://debate.uvm.edu/learndebate.html http://www.malaspina.com/etext/purekant.htm http://www.class.uidaho.edu/mickelse...ical-reaso.txt http://www.mala.bc.ca/~johnstoi/Nietzsche/history.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext03/bygdv10.txt http://users.compaqnet.be/cn127103/N...of_tragedy.htm http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext04/tloph10.txt http://www.friesian.com/arthur.htm Internet forums are a means to an end: building knowledge on the topic of the site that hosts them. Reasoned argument and debate analyze learning and replace lesser organization with clearer order. While rules can be circumvented, a goal of information building can be compared to any action, determining whether that action increased organization. Communication requires different approaches be argued, but contrarians* and sycophants* increase entropy through repetition of static ideas. If the topic is not socially sanctioned, maturity is required to avoid hysteria* or bigotry*. Although many forums exist as surrogate lives* for their owners, those who live purposeful lives have no need for such crutches. Too much uniformity produces a clubhouse* and a clique*. Each forum provides an interactive knowledge space on the topic range of its host. Those who participate can have either: 1. A community where participation gains the user an equal share of attention. By agreeing with the socially correct assumptions, the user becomes a member of the "in" group. img/images/graemlins/gasmask2.gif/img Or, 2. A community where evolution promotes better ideas, deriving clearer vision on every point of learning and replacing less precise knowledge with that of a higher degree of organization. The unequal user sacrifices individual desires for attention for place in a hierarchy that selects the best ideas and people to implement them. img/images/graemlins/icon_simon.gif/img All standards can be flexible*, but the goal of a forum for constructive dialogue is higher-quality information, and the methods for this are as much the contributing of positive knowledge* as it is removing lesser knowledge (and noise*). This balance enables a forum that can be read like a news source. There should also be a "Compost" folder for certain threads when they're either a) redundant b) unintelligent c) lacking in decorum d) unproductive, or e) they have outlived their usefulness (just like the Demand better moderators for this forum here thread, where its goal has been reached, yet people are still arguing on there). It wouldn't be "judgmental" to have these types of posts deleted and moved to a Compost folder; it would be a pruning that keeps the Brownpride Forums healthy! *Contrarians - those who arrive at a discussion with the purpose of opposing what they perceive to be the dominant opinion. They do this to be iconoclastic and to feel "unique," and have no intent of contributing worthy information: what they want to do is strike back at the agreement others have, and they have nothing to offer of their own. Since contrarians find a desire to fight before even deciding on their own opinions, they invariably blunder into a discussion, accuse everyone of groupthink* and then trot out some tired cliches . When these cliches are dismissed, contrarians will accuse forum members of not being "open-minded" and addressing the novel and individualistic opinions of the iconoclastic contrarians. Contrarians have nothing to offer and should be terminated on that basis, not through some shallow justification that they are "trolls" or are behaving badly, although both might be true to some degree. Contrarians resemble the leftist and philosophical liberal side of politics in that they see any order as a dominant groupthink and thus a threat to their own individuality. Contrarians can be found arguing for greater personal liberty so they do not have to "conform" to an existing dogma, even if it is sensible, because they lack a feeling of fulfillment unless they have construed all other people as wrong and themselves as messianic deliverers. Although modern "Conservatives" are also blight, it is for this reason that leftism destroys every system it touches and replaces it with a momentum toward "individuality" that, by finding no common standards, destroys the shared values of a society. *Sycophants - the flip side of contrarians: they arrive at a forum with the purpose of finding out what the prevalent dogma is so that they can attach themselves to it, and thus gain power. They are demagogues in the small, and flatterers, and will contribute nothing because to them ideas exist as badges of identity and have no meaning in themselves. While contrarians resemble the "individualistic" non-conformity and personal drama of the left, sycophants represent the sickening "do not rock the boat" of modern conservatives. *Hysteria - what occurs when people confuse their personal opinions with the operation of the world as whole. "But I'm offended!" is the rallying cry of such people. They destroy argument by driving it off into a tangent of egomania in which they discuss their own opinions, whether germaine to the topic or not. Such zero-value knowledge quickly inundates a forum and turns it into the kind of coffee klatch conversation that will drive even a three-toed sloth into suicidal boredom. *Bigotry - Bigotry is not confined to just guys in Klan costumes. (Nationalism ethnocultural separation is a rational viewpoint, but hating all others worldwide for not being of a "superior Chosen race" is both Talmudic and ineffective.) Any idea can become accepted as literal truth if it is popular enough, and bigots latch onto this (much like sycophants) and use it as a source of power that justifies their lashing out against any who do not repeat the dogma. Bigots on the internet are almost overwhelmingly of the liberal variety, but it can afflict any ideology. Bigotry divides forums into an "in" group who repeat "safe" dogma, and an "out" group, which is...everyone else in the world. This type of thinking leads to paranoia and utterly stagnant discussion. *Surrogate lives - Anything which tells you to let go of eternal values (art, ideology, spirituality, science, passion) in favor of more convenient but shorter-term tangible values -- such as socialization, trendiness/newness/novelty, or comformity to a dogma of shorter-term tangible values like liberalism, Communism, Social Darwinism, etc -- is essentially advertising, and aims not to serve you but to control you for its own end. If you follow it, you have given up your own control, which means life is easier because if you succeed, it doesn't mean anything because someone else set up the obstacle course for you, and if you fail, it wasn't your fault either. Convenience and making life "easier" however results in lesser performance and fewer personal successes, or artistic/political/spiritual successes, by the nature of its artificially limited and defined worldview. *Clubhouse - any forum where a dogma has been socially engineered into being considered absolute "truth," and therefore, only those who accept that dogma in whole are permitted to be in the favored social group. Obviously, this leads to total stagnation. *Clique - When there is no accepted value in common among members of a board, anarchy results, and small groups form based on very simple linear agreements: popularity, single-issue voting, appearance, wealth, etc. One might say pluralism is a giant system of cliques, but it is the idea that no agreement can be found (as it would damage our "individuality" to agree on anything) that produces cliquedom. *Flexible - Users who may have simply been raised by egalitarians/vendidos or have just never confronted useful information that would intellectualize them will be, without scorn or malice, allowed to return only when/if they reach a more useful state. If you are not given access to non-socially-conditioned attitudes, you won't know they exist, because your entire world will be socially-defined. Thus some grow up bad, but turn out okay, especially if given a firm push in the right direction and not "tolerated" or "allowed" to be idiots everywhere they'd like to be. Success should be given only to those who achieve it, not those who "have their hearts in the right place(s)." However, no vengeful or retributive action should be taken against those who are simply clueless; they are not necessarily that way for life, and if not accepted fully in their clueless state, will have something for which it is worth striving to motivate them to educate themselves in the important and useful ways necessary for, say, being part of a brown-pride forum... If you are "banned" or have posting rights revoked on this forum for saying something idiotic, write to the moderators in a month or so when you may have worked out some intermediate issues -- these aren't "your issues" or the world's, but a combination of the two -- and if your behavior is then suitable, you might be welcome again. The moderators have all reason to reserve the power of excluding those who would damage this online community until that point in time where those users are ready to rejoin the discipline of effective discussion. This does not mean you must 100% agree with their opinions, but that you must be ready to act in accordance to any rules they make for posting. *(Positive) Knowledge - Anything that increases either the breadth of knowledge (new ideas, new discoveries) or its specificity (new taxonomies) or its degree of organization (hierarchy, language) is positive knowledge. It adds something to what is already known, even if that is only a reorganization of extant parts. *Noise - Looking over the posts by the worst users, I could see some general archetypes... Brownness: this site is pro-Nationalist (or at least you'd think so with its name), but you may have read threads where groupthink sets in fast. I recommend you don't post topics demonstrating or explaining your view of Nationalism unless you add something to what we know about it; "Are you in the club?" posts are not constructive. There is no problem with any topic here or any opinion as long as it adds something. Complaining, ranting, contrarian anti-racism or insane bigotry are all useless. Effigies: Sometimes people like to point out something that sucks, and let others have fly at it. These are fun but ineffective and are basically a covert form of survey topic. Please avoid. We would do best to avoid both kinds of *groupthink: 1. Outsider groupthink: most people take their opinions from television. They argue from a point of view that accepts said opinions as fact. That isn't true here. Outsider groupthink results in any topic (say, race) bringing up the same argument (anti-racists vs nationalists) every goddamn time. Don't fall into this trap! 2. Insider groupthink: any group of restrained size can fall prey to clubhouse mentality. Keep ready to discuss your ideas from new views, with the mindset that you are translating your ideas into a new angle so that others can understand them. In other words, never stop the combat, if it's good combat. People bleating opposite dogmas at each other is counterproductive, as is people bleating the same dogma. Even worse are outsiders coming in, declaring they find groupthink, and using that as a basis for their arguments. All of these are destructive.