Aizle wrote:
Midgen wrote:
Aizle,
Monte had NO problem posting his 'opinion'. What was frustrating about his posting is, he would post his opinion as a statement of fact, and then would people would refute him, discredit his claims, or ask him for some substantiation of his position, he would just disappear. He did the ALL.THE.TIME.... I can't speak for everyone else, but it drove me bat **** insane (whatever that means).
Certainly, just like I (and most everyone here) states their opinion.
What I'm refering to is responding to questions on the "why" any of us hold those opinions. In essence, based on the way that everyone posts here, you are feeding ammunition to the enemy/opponent. Anything you say here can and absolutely will be held against you.
There's a big difference between you and Monty in that regard though. In you're case, it's mostly just a matter of disagreement. In Monty's case, he was usually so ridiculously wrong and misinformed that it was laughable. There's a reason he's the one with the reputation for getting pwned by his own links. Not just that, but he not only wouldn't state why, he'd just repeat his original assertion over and over and over as if the fact that he was irrefutably right was so obvious anyone could see it.
A really good example is the "Gaza White Phosphorous incident". He made the ridiculous claim that the Israelis were using WP on Gazan civilians; he even posted a picture. Unfortunately, it was a picture of an M825 smoke round, not a WP shell. While that round does
contain WP it isn't a "WP round" in any real sense, any more than toothpaste is a WP weapon just because it contains some. I posted numerous pictures explaining the technical differences, how the detonations of the rounds look different, and why smoke rounds aren't useful as incindiaries.
Monty just retreated into his typical "They're using it and you know it and you are just wrong because you're not a 4 star general and won't agree with me on other unrelated topics". It wasn't good enough for him to simply say "well, ok, I was mistaken about the WP, but I still disagree with ISraeli actions" which would have been a far more tenable position. No, he not only had to be right, he had to be right about his favored side (the Palestinians) being utterly helpless, innocent victims of brutal pointless slaughter using flame weapons by the horrendous, horrible, evil people he'd decided were the bad guys (Israel).
He'd just repeat himself, using ever more inflammatory language, and calling my personal situation and character into question with ever stronger language, and eventually just disappeared. What's worse is he then reappeared later trying to claim that he'd "debunked" the idea that Israel wasn't using incindiaries.
It's not like I was unique in terms of pwning him like that, plenty of other people have done it too. It's also not like that was the only time he just repeated himself in a frothing fury, and disappeared, only to reappear in another thread claiming he'd won, or debunked something. He did that constantly. In any thread not about HIGCC, whenever he wanted an example of people not listening when he was right, he'd talk about "HIGCC deniers" or how he'd "debunked" the idea that people had nothing to do with it, or whatever. Things still very much under contention were resolved issues in his mind simply becuase he'd stated his position and he couldn't possibly be wrong. He
just knew he was right and if anyone disgreed with him, no matter what their argument might be, he knew it
just had to be wrong even if he couldn't explain why, and when he couldn't, which was frequent, he'd devolve into one of his frantic insistencies on his own correctness, or simply refusal to explain himself because we "just wouldn't listen" to his evidence.
It didn't matter that his evidence was invariably between "weak" and "nonexistant" and that we wouldn't believe him because of that; it was just all about how he knew he was right and we just weren't listening because we were evil, obstinate conservatives. He basically saw anyone not sufficiently liberal as cartoonishly evil.
As for "can and will be used against you" if it's being used against you personally, point out the fallacious reasoning. If it's being used against your positions, find better positions or otherwise find a way to argue better. Or don't, and just say what you think and move on. Complaining that other people will cricticize what you say is silly; it's just admitting that you really don't want to deal with disagreement.