Merrick
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Re: No treatment for you, fatty...
Dec 08, 2005, 14:37
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I thank you heartily for the presumption that it's my mind being too quick for your dozy buggerness; those of a less charitable (or arguably more perceptive) disposition might say it's my mind wandering off on mad tangents.
But yeah, my point is that if we argue an addict's addiction is their own fault, we can make a case for people with STDs being self-inflicted (nobody forced them to have sex after all), or people who get mugged when walking alone in dodgy areas (they choose to put themselves at great risk that smarter people avoid).
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Merrick
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Re: No treatment for you, fatty...
Dec 08, 2005, 14:46
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It's not that I don't like being disagreed with - this board is here in part to share info but also so we can find people with whom we disagree to intelligently test our ideas.
I relish being proven wrong - whilst I'll have reasons for any position, I'm sure I can't be right on everything and so I want to find the wrong bits and jettison them.
I didn't see Lemon/Manao/Hongnam do that to me or anyone else. He'd state his position and when there was a point put that contradicted it he wouldn't deal with why the counterpoint didn't stand up. Instead he'd restate his first point. If things continued, he'd slur the integrity of the person challenging him, usually by picking a side-issue from the topic under discussion.
If it was pointed out that this is what he was doing and it wasn't actually dealing with the point, he'd simply repeat himself. This last tactic made him look sillier the more he did it, which makes me believe it wasn't deliberate use of crooked strategy but that he's never figured out how to follow a line of argument or how a debate is structured.
I want to be disagreed with - either I can show the other person why their position doesn't hold water, or they can do it to me, or we make each other find the truth in the middle. But that takes respect and clear thinking from both sides, rather than heated gladiatorial phrasing and crooked logic which prevents any of us from evolving our ideas.
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Kid Calamity
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Re: No treatment for you, fatty...
Dec 08, 2005, 15:07
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Unfortunantely, Hongnam got banned. He was quite adamant about some research that he felt weak in an article of yours, this seemed to be embarrassing you.
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Cleira
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Re: No treatment for you, fatty...
Dec 08, 2005, 16:02
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>>But yeah, my point is that if we argue an addict's addiction is their own fault, we can make a case for people with STDs being self-inflicted (nobody forced them to have sex after all), or people who get mugged when walking alone in dodgy areas (they choose to put themselves at great risk that smarter people avoid).
I don't think you can make a simplistic comparisson like that. Every addict has a different story. There are potentially many many different motivations going on inside an addict and to make any sort of general assumption about the whys and wherefores of addicts' actions will simply mislead. Humans are complicated. Addiction is a very very complicated thing - to attempt to untangle anything more than an individual's case would be pointless.
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Merrick
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Re: No treatment for you, fatty...
Dec 08, 2005, 17:27
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That didn't embarrass me in the least. I said that the article included hard fact and some assumption, and that I'd been clear which was which. Where there was an assumption, it was made clear what the basis for the assumption was.
He responded by pointing out that assumption isn't hard fact, which I knew and conceded already.
Hongnam refused to respond to any points about the grounds for assumption, excpet to say that all assumptions are roundless (except on one occasion where he said there is such a thing as fair assumption, before reverting back to the 'all groundless' position again).
It was yet another case of the Lemon/Manao/Hongnam thing of picking a small issue, implying it slurs the integrity of the individual saying it, and refusing to respond to the counterpoints.
If there was an error in factual basis, if the grounds for assumption were proven wrong, then I'd happily concede it. He did not have any evidence to the contrary of what I'd said, and seemingly only had a desire to shout one point repeatedly even when it had been answered.
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Merrick
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Re: No treatment for you, fatty...
Dec 08, 2005, 17:34
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"I don't think you can make a simplistic comparisson like that. "
Insofar as making a generalisation about the cause for addiction, you are right Cleira.
I was just trying to counter the 'they chose it, nobody forced the drink down thier neck' line of thought with something that illustates that many conditions we have sympathy with can be regarded in the same way.
The reasons for addiction are indeed many and various. That said, so are the reasons for walking through dodgy bits of town or having sex.
"to attempt to untangle anything more than an individual's case would be pointless."
hmm, not so sure about it being pointless. There certianly are correlations between certain types of life factors and addiction, and so we can see that a propensity for addiction can be found in certain types of people more than others. The common experience between many addicts is what makes self-help groups so successful.
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Popel Vooje
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Re: No treatment for you, fatty...
Dec 17, 2005, 22:34
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Yeah, I still think they were definitely the same person. Their writing style, their let's-bait-kneejerk-liberals-to-the-point-where-we-become-bigger-kneejerks-ourselves stance, the fact that they couldn't seem to stick around for longer than a few days without starting an argument (indeed, starting arguments seemed to be their whole raison d'etre).
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