[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

I don't really think the lackadaisical objection by Joe Public is important, or problematic, but I find the empassioned debates from people who aren't educated on the issue can only come down to laziness/wilful ignorance or entitlement to outrage.

Yeah, I hear you. It's obviously an epidemic, because it's hardly confined to this issue. FML, try talking to people in BC about the oilsands. But it's a hard problem to navigate, because people are going to hear about some story, and they're inevitably going to have an opinion on it. It's really hard to draw the line and say, "you're entitled to your opinion, but not that strong an opinion", or "you're entitled to your opinion, but only as soon as you've engaged in X amount of work to fully understand the topic". That's my main point. I mean, how strong is too strong? How much reading do you have to do before you're entitled to engage in the debate?

Of course, I'm in a glass house throwing stones here, because I frequently get frustrated by the exact same thing you're annoyed with... apparently I'm in an uncommonly understanding mood today. Hopefully that goes away soon.

It's not like I have to do heavy lifting to gather the facts on an issue, and it's not exactly difficult to have a measured approach when I'm not sure I understand the details.

Very good point, sir. If you can manage to understand the issue, then anyone can!

... I'm sorry I had to, you set that up too easily. But this does lead to a point: your politics are clearly left-leaning. Nothing wrong with that inherently, but it determines how you investigate issues, as it does with just about everyone. In this case, you went and found sources that took positions that align with your political preferences, and in this case, they were absolutely right. XYZ poster went and found some that aligned with their CPC orientation, and they were wrong. That's not to say the inverse won't be true on some other topic, even adjusting for differences in propensity for objective critical thinking. Another problem with humanity: we're not wired for even attempting to understand things.

Can you also excuse people who note the problem of bias media while only posting clearly biased media?

No, but I wasn't trying to. I'm guessing you're talking about someone I have on ignore, but I do agree with you that this is just an example of what I was talking about above re: confirmation bias.

You've got posters here, when served up plenty of information, just outright ignore it and instead make straw man arguments on how people who disagree with them are arguing in support of terrorism and al-Qaeda. If it's not lazy, it's mind-bendingly dumb.

I'd say more the latter, given the intense effort some of them put into it.