- Dec 8, 1999
- 7,394
- 29,249
Your post was akin to yelling "fire" in a crowded theater, then arguing afterwards that "facts are like, subjective, dude" and "there's a fire somewhere and I didn't specifically say how big it was or whether it was even here, so back off. A bunch of people were laughing, too, and that's also a noise that they made, which I found distracting. If they're allowed to laugh, I should be allowed to make sounds, too. And really, what is a movie theater anyway? We're all just like, floating through space, man."
That you can spin yourself around in a circle all day is immaterial.
There are consequences to these types of statements.
Donald Trump blaming "illegal immigrants" for losing the popular vote, or blaming "sanctuary cities" for the opioid crisis has consequences. Hate mongering often leads to violence and harassment. It's irresponsible for us to serve as a vector for that type of baseless scapegoating. If you want to believe that a cabal of repitilian shapeshifters is using cell phone radiation to turn children gay, that's your prerogative. It's not incumbent upon us to give you a platform to share that belief.
If you're interested in epistemology or the sociology of knowledge, great. It's a fascinating field and it's never been more relevant. It's even been discussed in this thread: https://niketalk.com/threads/official-political-discussion-thread.509493/page-3958#post-28975799
It is not, however, a cover for unsubstantiated claims. That all knowledge is inherently subjective means that, to be responsible, each claim should be properly situated and regarded as provisional. Should additional information raise doubts as to the validity of a previously held belief, we must be open to modifying that belief. Otherwise, those beliefs are based in faith, not reason or experience.
The irony, here, is that while arguing that there is no absolute truth - you're eschewing the shared, empirical standards that develop humanity's relative truth in favor of a prejudicial belief that you refuse to question or qualify.
So I take it you never bothered to read the article I posted yesterday. You can (and should) call out the racism of the Netanyahu administration without engaging in some drunken Mel Gibson rant about Jews controlling the world.
You're acting in bad faith and will be restricted from this discussion moving forward.
