Quote:
Originally Posted by New Era
Because it's like debating with your four year old. It's a no win situation. In their heads they are brilliant. To you and anyone else listening they are talking gibberish. But the second you do engage them and drop the hammer on them, putting them in their place, you look like the bad guy because you're beating up on a four year old. Many times it isn't worth it.
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This is a pretty good description of the situation. There are some pseudo-intellectuals (even on this board!) who like to espouse some pretty ridiculous and easily dismissed views and probably feel quite happy with themselves about it. They'll post little bits of information here and there, or trot out a talking point they heard from whatever pablum machine they're hooked up to, but when confronted with facts or context, they *poof* vanish, or just repeat the same thing they just said regardless of what facts were brought up to refute it, because the only good facts are their facts. If someone brings up context that provide a different interpretation of their "facts" it's bad, but ignoring context or facts they don't agree with? That goooood. They find themselves backed into a corner because, intellectually, there's nothing actually there. They don't bother actually looking into the issue or even reading all of the things they link to (for example), just pulling what makes sense to them and repeating that one thing. They aren't able to actually discuss it in a meaningful way (you know, not just repeating the same thing 100 times) because while they might have read it, they don't have the capacity to understand it.
You might often see them complaining about people using the words "racism" or "sexism" as a insult, as though accurate descriptions of their positions and their thoughts are somehow an insult. Sure, having your views labelled racist or sexist is insulting, especially when you have an unearned perception of yourself born from a complete lack of critical thought and world understanding, but it's also fairly easy not to be insulted by these things and instead clarify your own point, or at least bring up valuable context to diminish that view, right? That is, if you have a basic understanding of racism or sexism. But their response usually seems to be *poof* or "I err... am not.... that is a personal attack!"
Those complaints usually stem from the fact that not only are they unable to intellectually discuss an idea (any idea), but they can't even examine their own views. Of course, they're usually classical liberals or libertarians or some other nonsense which they think makes them sound a little more clever or interesting. They gobble up Petersen, and Harris, with maybe a side of Shapiro, without ever actually thinking about what those guys are saying and maybe agreeing with some of it, but not of all of it (you know, like any reasonably intellectual person might do). They like buckets, they
understand buckets. Buckets make this complex world
easy, buckets make
sense.
So it becomes pretty clear when someone asks why "the left" isn't debating these "intellectuals" (when they clearly are, all the time) or when they go *poof* as soon as someone brings up something contrary to the world view they've been told to have by someone marginally smarter or at least more publically visible than them, that being able to reguritate information that fits your world view is not quite the same as understanding that information or seeking out information. That's called learning.