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Stop designing games! Or you will be a criminals.
Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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Good behaviour for starving-man(can satisfy a basic need) but bad behaviour of starving-man from the point of view of food-man(probably injured badly, dead in the worst case).

I really don't want to get into a serious drawn-out debate, but in reply to just the above: the man who beat up the man who refused to give the food is in the wrong. Nobody has any obligation to help you no matter what state you're in, and nobody has the "right to eat."

And as far as my understanding of Christianity is concerned (my beliefs, this is not a thread on christianity!), they've both sinned. The one man should have shared, the other should have accepted whatever he recieved (even if it was nothing).

I don't want to irritate anyone, I just felt like sharing.

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Kanzure
Member #3,669
July 2003
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I don't have to but i agree.

Thanks for reminding me of your freedoms, sherlock. ;D:-*

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But "good" and "bad" is relative to the point of view.

I was talking about behavior. You behave for a reason. I behave to accomplish goals. Thus "good" and "bad" is relative to the goals I have. So, yes, it is possible to say if something is "good" or "bad" in a situation like I have just described. If I fall off a cliff, that'll be bad behaivor because it doesn't let me accomplish the said goals. :)

Kitty Cat
Member #2,815
October 2002
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the man who beat up the man who refused to give the food is in the wrong.

In your opinion. Given that there's no other circumstances surrounding the issue, I'd say neither was wrong. People need to eat to live. Living is an instinctual desire. Hence the person did what he needed to survive. By the same token, the man with the food had no obligation to give the food. That's just the way the cookie crumbled.

IMO, there is no objective right or wrong. Just consequences to chosen actions.

--
"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will pee on your computer." -- Bruce Graham

Kanzure
Member #3,669
July 2003
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IMO, there is no objective right or wrong. Just consequences to chosen actions.

The consequences can be deemed "good" and "bad" for a goal. If a goal is to save the planet, blowing it up is definately bad. It's not good. There's just no way that blowing up the planet is good.

I win. This is the biggest thread hijack.. ever!. ;D
(Oddly enough this discussion has been going much better than threads that are actually about these issues.)

Kitty Cat
Member #2,815
October 2002
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The consequences can be deemed "good" and "bad" for a goal.

For which the goal is also just another action that will have consequences, only to be determined "good" or "bad" by it's effect on other goals, which are only determined "good" or "bad" by its effect on further goals.... see where that's going? Good and bad are subjective. One person/group/society sees something as good, another sees the same thing as bad.

--
"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will pee on your computer." -- Bruce Graham

Kanzure
Member #3,669
July 2003
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For which the goal is also just another action that will have consequences,

A goal is not an action. (It's the aim of actions, "That which should be striven for.") The actions to reach the goal will have consequences. In the context of the goal, the actions that help to reach the goal are considered good. Out of context, .. well, there's problems.

Maybe this is a good time to mention "teh ultimate goal" that this could apply to. The goal of life is to find the goals to life.

There's some special cases:
1) There is no goal.
2) The goal is to not find the goal.

#1 is nihilistic in nature and should be ignored, goals are very real. #2 is unrealistic because it contradicts itself.

Nezic
Member #3,389
March 2003

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Me: To set up the issue, think of two caveman families living together long, long ago.

Kanzure: Hm.. on a different note, think about what they were capable of doing at that time. They were to pursue their emotional values. We obviously have a lot more options these days, and that does not mean we should follow our primal-instinct. (Be happy all the time, retire early, etc. Whatever. ;))

"On a different note"? Your debate tactic seems to be to change the subject.

I suppose using the term caveman was a poor choice, as it has a lot of loaded meaning. I intended to merely set up an example with 'modern'(in terms of evolution) humans in a simple social situation. I think this would be kind of obvious by reading the rest of the example, but then, I'm not even sure you did, since you ignored almost the entire post.

Of the two things you actually did respond to:

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Me: the less people are able to keep track of everyone's relative contribution to the group.

Kanzure: And thus the horror movies of the societies that keep track of a citizen's every movement.

You seem to misunderstand my statement, or rather, you responded to it before reading the rest of the post which, gasp, is intended to back that claim up. I guess it can be an honest mistake, since it is common practice to respond to posts on a phrase by phrase basis in forums. But if you read the rest, perhaps you should have later revised this comment.

To breifly sum up what I said, it is genetically inherent in people to pay attention to what others contribute to you, versus what you contribute to them. But the more complex and expansive society becomes, the harder it is for people to observe the 'fairness'(to them personally) of other people's contributions, since they never even see most people involved in general society, unlike that of a small tribal group where everyone knows everyone.

And don't most of the horror movies you speak of depict highly socialist/communist societies? I'm not even sure what your point was.

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Me: Being able to own your own property and choose the best deals offered provides a hedge against people cheating the system.

Kanzure: I think we could be better off not having to worry about people cheating the system. (And now to make sure only "good" people get into it.. :))

How do you 'not have to worry' about people cheating the system (any system)? People have a genetic predisposition towards cheating when it is benificial to them. We can't be better off not having to worry about people cheating the system, if only because it's a completely unobtainable ideal/mental-abstraction.

My comments, such as private property being a hedge, still stand.

And as for you final statement(that doesn't deal with the actual points I was making in the post):

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Me: Also, I've tried to avoid going off into tangents dealing with other aspects of evolutionary psychology--its a pretty complicated topic and I'd do a horrible job explaining much of it :P.

Kanzure: Are you sure you understand it? I find that I don't completley understand something until I'm able to explain it to others.

Yes, I'm sure I understand it. How nice of you to insult me. An unwritten reason of why I'd do a bad job explaining much of the topic is because I'm not going to spend a month sitting here trying to write what takes entire books to cover.

Also, I'm not that great of a writer, but that doesn't exclude me from knowning a topic. If you really need an example, let me simplify: you can find, say, a farmer who is an expert at what he does, but he might not be very good at explaining the various details of grain drying(that determines final yield quality), crop management, fertilizers, affects of rain and temperature in varying parts of the season, different kinds of possible pests and ways to control them, etc. Let alone explain them in a forum post, revising and re-revising his writing until he's cross-eyed.

Kanzure
Member #3,669
July 2003
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I have this incredible ability to respond to a post completely out of order.

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"On a different note"? Your debate tactic seems to be to change the subject.

If you insist, I'll go back and respond. Edit: I believe the reason why I did not reply directly to the topics involved is because they do make sense. I don't have anything against them directly. Or, perhaps it is that you just posted a semi-summary of topics. There was no "essence" to respond to. (Or perhaps I am confused. Correct my errorful ways. (?))

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And don't most of the horror movies you speak of depict highly socialist/communist societies? I'm not even sure what your point was.

My point was that there are some stories authors have tried to warn us to stay away from. This point wasn't exactly a contributing factor.

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Yes, I'm sure I understand it. How nice of you to insult me. An unwritten reason of why I'd do a bad job explaining much of . Completely.the topic is because I'm not going to spend a month sitting here trying to write what takes entire books to cover.

I won't flop over to your ideas without an explanation. Nevertheless, if you don't want to explain something, don't bring it into a debate. It's like abandoning your opinions. "Well, they're just right because they are mine.".. something to that liking. (Perhaps you have seen people talk like this before.)

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Also, I'm not that great of a writer, but that doesn't exclude me from knowning a topic.

Yes, it doesn't exclude you - of course not. You know it. But it excludes me. :P

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How do you 'not have to worry' about people cheating the system (any system)? People have a genetic predisposition towards cheating when it is benificial to them. We can't be better off not having to worry about people cheating the system, if only because it's a completely unobtainable ideal/mental-abstraction.

I don't know. It depends on which system we are talking about. People have self-control; Some do not practice it. Given time, self-control can become more so that they don't want (or need) to cheat the system. That brings up another point - why would a person need to cheat the (un)said(?) system?

Richard Phipps
Member #1,632
November 2001
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Gah! I've just come back from a night out drinking and dancing. As such I'm in no fit state to respond to the replies to my last post.

It's a complicated subject and my brain hurts. :P

Nezic
Member #3,389
March 2003

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Or, perhaps it is that you just posted a semi-summary of topics. There was no "essence" to respond to.

How was there was no 'essence'? The essence (thesis) was the first paragraph after the intro:

"The main problem with communism(and why it can't work, in my opinion) is that the farther away from small bands of people living together and the more interconnected society becomes(modern times is a pretty good example of this), the less people are able to keep track of everyone's relative contribution to the group."

I should have made the thesis statement more precise by adding "and a communistic government doesn't have a mechanism to compensate for this problem." I certainly included this aspect in my supporting arguments, but it was a mistake to leave it out of the thesis.

To help you follow the flow of my original post, here's the breakdown:

1. Thesis statement.
2. Three or four paragraphs explaining the idea of cheating vs. cheater detection in people, in both small and large scale societies, which my thesis needs to build on.
3. Five paragraphs supporting my thesis.
4. A final paragraph where I am just describing how I feel about the quality of my post.

Hopefully that clears up questions about what my overall point was.

#4 above seems to be causing some confusion/contention. Mentioning evolutionary psychology was not ment to be a supporting argument for anything, or even a point in and of itself.

Basically, to paraphrase and simplify my statements in the final paragraph: "I felt this essay was a little rough. Also, I did my best to avoid going into tangents about evolutionary psychology in general (the cheater/cheater-detection concept is just one aspect of it)."

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I won't flop over to your ideas without an explanation. Nevertheless, if you don't want to explain something, don't bring it into a debate.

What ideas am I not explaining? As I said, I wasn't even arguing anything else about evolutionary psychology.

This comment is irritating not only because I have explained the ideas I brought up, but also because it apparently stems from a misunderstanding of what I ment to begin with in the final paragraph of my original post.

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People have self-control; Some do not practice it. Given time, self-control can become more so that they don't want (or need) to cheat the system. That brings up another point - why would a person need to cheat the (un)said(?) system?

(Starting with the last part of this quote)
Asking why someone would 'need' to cheat a system isn't the right way to think about it. It's like asking why would someone need to eat an icecream cone, or why would someone need to paint their house green instead of blue. 'Cheating', and this is not a very accurate term for the concept, is generally more ingrained into one's personality. For example, laziness is a form of cheating. Someone who doesn't really like to work, or just doen't like the work he's been assigned to might cut corners or slack off.. generally just not get as much work done as other people. Lazy people(unless they're also kinda dumb) also tend to try and give the impression that they aren't actually lazy, so they don't get spurned by their co-workers or employer. While you could sit there and specifically decide 'I think I need to be lazy, so I'm going to do X amount less work today', it generally just doesn't happen that way. It's ingrained in people--it's not a matter of need.

As for self-control about 'cheating', you seem to assume that everyone will come to the conclusion that cheating is wrong, and that it won't benifit them. Of course, it's pretty much guaranteed that at least someone is going to keep or develope the attitude of 'hey! this is great! all these suckers are easy pickings!'. It isn't like someone that binges on food, knowing it's bad for them and just not yet having the self-control to stop. People can actively decide that maniuplating the system to their advantage is a worthy goal for themselves. Someone will 'cheat' a system because they think it is in their best self-interest to do so(meaning they like the potential benefits, and feel they won't get caught). And don't forget, it's also in the self-interest of a cheater to hide the fact that he's cheating.

Anyway.. time for bed(been up since 5 this morning to go fishing :P)

SonShadowCat
Member #1,548
September 2001
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You see, the big FATAL flaw with governments today is they don't discourage "cheating" and laziness. At least with communism/facism/etc, the lazy people are sent to gulags or killed.

Kanzure
Member #3,669
July 2003
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"The main problem with communism(and why it can't work, in my opinion) is that the farther away from small bands of people living together and the more interconnected society becomes(modern times is a pretty good example of this), the less people are able to keep track of everyone's relative contribution to the group."

Since you can't seem to get it, I'll try to end this small fued with the following information.
1) In response to the quote: Ok.
2) I don't have anything (useful) to respond to that.
3) Somehow copyright laws and patent (laws?) exist to make sure that some contributions are protected. And thus we start over at the original topic.. :P

Nezi, about cheating. I'm going to bring some religion into this. There are many religious people that would never think about manipulating anything to their advantage because it would displease their God or send them to hell. This has appeared to work for those that truely embrace that religion's system. (This could be considered unhealthy - embracing something, like a religious system, without putting enough thought into it (i.e. children)). With well-thought out ideas and concepts, a person could surely bring her or himself to be guided by another (i.e. non-religious) system . Your argument is that it's just the way humans are. I'd prefer to believe that we can improve ourselves.

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You see, the big FATAL flaw with governments today is they don't discourage "cheating" and laziness.

This is possibly because the governments have almost "pledged" to stay out of personal affairs. There is a healthy zone that governments and other people should definately stay out of, but, the general well-being of a person is overlooked. Too much is assumed about the person - i.e. that they are a good citizen. Schools in the U.S. don't make good citizens, or so it seems that they aren't responsible enough to fix what's wrong with the country, so I think that there should be another way to inform citizens on life and things that we're talking about here. And if they can't understand some concepts (i.e. "Why does everybody have to contribute? Why can't I just waste my life away?"), they stay in school (I'd prefer to call it a "camp").

Ultio
Member #1,336
April 2001

I like orange juice!

---
"It's nice knowing that someday, the software I write will just be pirated by millions of people." :-/
http://loomsoft.net | Zep's Dreamland | Allegro Newbie Tutorials

Kanzure
Member #3,669
July 2003
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I like orange juice!

This is not about what you, or I, like at the moment.

Dennis
Member #1,090
July 2003
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Let's hijack it again:
I like crackers. Polly wants a cracker8-)

Chris Katko
Member #1,881
January 2002
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I like orange juice!

Not to hijack the hijack... but...

Happy Juice! ... Happy Juice!

;)

-----sig:
“Programs should be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.” - Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
"Political Correctness is fascism disguised as manners" --George Carlin

Arthur Kalliokoski
Second in Command
February 2005
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A few observations from widely dispersed posts: (Also, I'm from the US)

The spell check hasn't worked when I tried it.

You can "sue" people for anything, I can "sue" somebody for being ugly (if the lawyers & courts decide to throw it out that's a different matter)

The aborignal (sp?) societies that "don't have greed" can manufacture all their artifacts from natural materials in a few minutes. The movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy" c. 1985 depicts havoc rendered on a native tribe when a passing plane discards a (unique to them) Pepsi bottle which proves to be an extremely efficient mortar (mortar & pestle for grinding) and is fought over.

The starving man & backpack man are merely rediscovering Malthus, the Four Horsemen, etc. We've merely pushed the problem back for a few years with technology.

I think some patents are procured in a defensive manner, like a few years ago when somebody bought the domain name "www.mcdonalds.com" (I think) so they could sell it to McDonalds Inc. for an extorbitant price. Thereafter, large companies bought up all foreseeable domain names to prevent this. The point here is about getting domain names to prevent others from charging them, not the dweeb who got it to extort in the first place.

They all watch too much MSNBC... they get ideas.

Kanzure
Member #3,669
July 2003
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The point here is about getting domain names to prevent others from charging them, not the dweeb who got it to extort in the first place.

They'll have to pay in the first place. Like we determined, there's a lot of people trying those "get rich fast" schemes (some by buying the domain names). This might be considered a way to cheat the system. But again, I ask why do they feel they have to cheat the system? Why do they act on those feelings?

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I think some patents are procured in a defensive manner, like a few years ago when somebody bought the domain name "www.mcdonalds.com" (I think) so they could sell it to McDonalds Inc. for an extorbitant price.

I'm sorry, I fail to see the connection between domain name registration and patents. Can you explain?

Nezic
Member #3,389
March 2003

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Since you can't seem to get it,

That's funny, to me, you don't seem to get it ;). I will agree to end that part of the discussion though.

I do have to say, however, that you seem to think that if someone doesn't reject relgion, then they haven't 'put enough thought' into it. But keep in mind, not many other things have had as much collective thought put into it than religion has over the course of history. Some things, such as creationism(I obviously believe in evolution) may be incorrect, but the values that religion teaches people to live by are pretty solid. It is people themselves that cause problems. Not all people who profess to be Christians live by all the teachings, and some people may even abuse the church structure, but that does not make religion invalid. I could say that if everyone truely lived according to the teachings of Christianity, then the would would be a happy, perfect place. Of course I then run into the same problem that you(I argue) do, it just doesn't work that way.

You seem to say that you are a tolerant person, and that we must be tolerant and consider your ideaology(until we accept it, I guess), but in some of the posts you've made in this thread, you seem pretty intolerant towards christianity.

Kanzure
Member #3,669
July 2003
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This is the second attempt at this post, the original was lost.

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I do have to say, however, that you seem to think that if someone doesn't reject relgion, then they haven't 'put enough thought' into it.

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You seem to say that you are a tolerant person, and that we must be tolerant and consider your ideaology(until we accept it, I guess), but in some of the posts you've made in this thread, you seem pretty intolerant towards christianity.

That's correct. Christianity has nothing to offer me.

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but that does not make religion invalid.

You don't agree with somebody's facts when you present facts that disprove's the others. The other person's facts are hence now invalid. Think of what I'm talking about like that - you must present the facts to invalidate that which is said to be a fact / "the best way" (according to them, but still, I don't want to provide "the best way" - such an accusation seems punishable by law. Heh.)

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but the values that religion teaches people to live by are pretty solid.

Before I make my main response to this, I want to define "values", not for your sake nor for mine, rather for this debate. I'm sure you have a reasonable idea about what values are. I'm assuming that these values you speak of are morals. Yes?

Let's define morals.

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ethical motive: motivation based on ideas of right and wrong

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The accepted standards of right and wrong that are usually applied to personal behavior.

Personal behavior is actions based on influences. Influences are everywhere, such as a painting, or a color - they all influence a person. One of the main things that things influence is emotion. For example, a painting that makes somebody depressed has influenced their emotional state. We have previously determined in this thread that "right" and "wrong" are not constant determenants, "from my point of view what you are doing is wrong, but you say that it is right" (etc). What somebody is doing can be said to be obiding by their morals (see definition) - their morals are influencing their behavior. If objects are influencing their emotional status, which is thus affecting personal behavior, can't it be said that their morals are also being affected? Morals can be "applied" to this influenced behavior, moreso influencing it. Things need not be influenced but rather have directions of their own!

And when something has a direction, it can easily be considered a goal. "Something that which should be striven for" is a goal - a direction is applied work, towards something - a goal. The direction can't (shouldn't) be influenced, it's aiming for the goal, and that's where it was pre-determined to go.

This is where my system crashed last, so I'll post this and go on in a second with an edit. Edit;

What I wanted to do was to find a list of "plainly stated christian values/morals/ethics", but so far my search attempts have not found anything. I was going to respond and prove that you don't need to have "morals" to live a life full of accomplishment and progression (of your goals and the goal). With a goal throughout your life and knowledge of what it will take, you can derive that killing your neighbor is probably not the best idea (for most circumstances I can think of, let's not go into counter-examples). You don't need morals and virtues to derive these things.

They may be solid, but you don't need them. They also obscure the vision of "the path" (or whatever direction you are taking in life) with a replacement of "God's will". (Am I wrong about the replacement aspect?)

Nezic
Member #3,389
March 2003

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That's correct. Christianity has nothing to offer me.

I ment to say that you seem intolerant towards christian beliefs of other people.

On morals, it doesn't matter if someone has never even heard of religion. If they believe something is right or wrong, for whatever underlying reason, they have moral values. Thinking that killing, stealing, and lying are wrong are examples of moral values.

Moral values are tools for people in society to get along. If someone goes around constanly lying to people(perhaps because he just doesn't care about the affects the lies have on people), people will shun the liar and not deal with him to protect themselves from misinformation. People as a group can recognize that lying is harmful and collectively decide that it is 'wrong'. They just came up with a moral value, and they, hopefully, teach it to their children. As time goes by, more and more things are realized to be harmful, and so moral values are created in the society stating that they are wrong things to do.

Over time, lots of moral values become determined--a lot of which deal with more and more complex situations. Especially true a couple thousand years ago, but still true today, people don't always know all the ins and outs of all of these moral values, and can't teach it their children or others, and obviously can't teach it to themselves. The need arises for an institution to act as a tool to teach this collection of complicated moral values.

You may say that people should be able to just 'put some thought' into the issues and figure out everything for themselves, but I'm sorry to say that learning moral values is like learning any other subject--people can't very easily come up with every concept dealing with a subject on their own. Why would we need schools for anything if we could?

Religion is the institution that many use as a tool to help teach tried-and-true moral values, even if those moral values can be arrived at independently or learned through other institutions.

You also seem to imply that devout christians blindly spout out whatever the church tells them, and they never consider the topics on their own. Have you ever been to a sermon or study group at a church? Believe it or not, churches do explore the affects that certain behavior(good or bad) have--that is, the reasons why they are good or bad.

If you've argued with religious people in the past and felt that they were idiots for not being able to defend their postition, perhaps they are merely bad at debating? LOTS of people are bad at debating, and when people use debate tactics against them that they aren't familiar with, they can get frustrated and upset. Don't confuse debate ability with the worthiness of one side of an issue versus the other.

Kanzure
Member #3,669
July 2003
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Then you agree with my almost confusing explanation about influences on behavior?

Nezic
Member #3,389
March 2003

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Then you agree with my almost confusing explanation about influences on behavior?

I can't really say for sure--that part was fairly confusing.

Did you agree or disagree with anything in my own post?



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