There's no real need to make something additionally controversial - if a topic is worthy of discussion it doesn't need the flamebait.
Re controversy, its unavoidable, as exaggeration fits into our general speech. Im sure you arent as racist as you come off, but its much easier for you to do the whole "too many dark skinned people" rather than going into detail about what you do or dont like about black people all the time. Similarly, the conversation 2 nights ago started basically because i expressed sheer indignation that anyone would pay £65 a pair of jeans and consider it a reasonable purchase. Exaggeration and overemphasis is impossible to avoid, its part of our dailly speech.
And to be honest, sometimes the generalisations are so broad they actually become a completely different point. No-one minds a little exaggeration for effect and indeed that's a common feature in internet discourse. So
"The amount of non-white MPs is like 0.000000000000001% of the total or something"
Is a valid enough point, albeit exagerrated. However if someone was to say "There's a lot of legal barriers in the UK which makes it impossible for a non-white person to be an MP." then obviously that would be false as evidenced by the fact there non-white MPs (albeit a relatively low number). The most obvious example I can think of is
here where you say :
Well the thing is your post is ambiguous here. You could be making a point about categories like "half-Irish" are essentially meaningless - and I think Tomkat argues that later in the thread. But from what you later say (when accusing me of pedantry) it seems that you actually meant something like "The amount of people calling themselves 'half' Irish is disproportionately high". Which is fair enough but
is a completely different point.
So i worded it badly i admit, and you are correct in your analysis. Its something (as i have admitted) i'm bad for. The point i was making is that people tend to view irish genes as luminous or something, they are more likely to comment or reflect upon an irish grandparent than an english one, or any other nationality really.
I'm curious as to why you picked these two for this one, but then again I tend to avoid IRC for debates (it seems a terrible medium for such an endeavour). Lots of people do this (probably the majority of GD). How many times has someone's argument / point been dismissed because the poster is too young / mentally ill / a lawyer / too short / too fat / etc?
While I doubt Mark would deny being a pedant, I don't actually recall him doing that very often (if at all) during any serious debate. Sometimes of course one exception does disprove an entire argument (as in my example above) and it's entirely appropriate to concentrate on one example.
Re mark, hes an incredibly nice, and incredibly intelligent chap, but occasionally with intelligence you have to get your "hands dirty" an in internet sense. Rather than talking about what he means or detailing a full post, he'll make a one or two line comment - like a footnote, almost, a small edit to his stance which we should all have stored in our minds.
Insults mean nothing to me; but again, i refer to saturday nights conversation. Me and nodrog held completely opposing views but were trying to reply to the broad thrust of what each person was saying - at the same time i had phang drifting in and out of the conversation and bolding it up, idimmu every now and again was saying (deffeh this is what we happen when we let a mentally ill person talk) (deffeh is mentally ill so his worldview is terrible) and then was suprised when i labelled him in this category. He wasnt trying to be constructive, it was even pretty poor trolling considering im simply not bothered, it was being dismissive for his own sake. As well as this at the same time i had posters who i dont mind (SYMM) and people who i am somewhat indifferent towards just now (xeolythe, rahihyn) drifting in and out, misquoting me and misdirecting the argument and taking it places it wasnt meant to have gone. And there was a sizeable number of people saying "this is boring cant we talk about something else" - well, if its boring, your welcome to talk about something else, but this is what i'm talking about tonight. nodrog in the end was drifting in and out and telling some of them he agreed with me on a certain point (because it was so off topic or whatever).
Im not meaning to butter nod up here btw, i think his general view on human nature is pretty terrible, and when we boiled down the discussion to the bare minimum, i still pretty much fundamentally disagreed with his way of thinking.
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