What passes for my brain having become slightly de-furred, I did wait for things to slow down, but it looks like they're not going to, so...
Fiona Moore wrote:
We got disagreed with and debated, true, but sometimes the disagreeing got more than a little heated. I also found it kind of insulting when, after constructing a carefully thought-out argument with examples from the episode (and I'd watched it specially for that purpose), some people came on to say "Oh, that's just your *opinion,*" which made me wonder why I'd bothered to find all those supporting examples.
I'd have just let this go, but I'm a little disturbed by the above. I sincerely hope that I haven't ever given the impression that I discount your right to your opinion, or the inherent value of having an opinion. I admire the obvious thought and care that go into your posts. But of course, that's different from sharing a person's opinion.
When somebody says to me, "that's just your opinion", I read it as saying that I haven't passed his or her threshold of persuasion, which of course is different for each individual belief of each person, and higher when the person holds said belief more strongly. It's very difficult (and unlikely) to persuade someone on the far end of the spectrum from one's own position, easier to persuade an undecided bystander. And of course, what appears to be a supporting example to one person, may appear contradictory or irrelevant to another. It doesn't mean anyone is being dismissive of you personally.
. ISTM the only thing that's
been clearly demonstrated is that we all have different ideas of what constitutes good debate etiquette - there is no Gospel According to Lysator.
I wasn't actually referring to debate ettiquette when I spoke of the Gospel. I mean that there are certain opinons which appear to be taken as the "mainstream opinion" on the Lyst.
I understood what you said; I was simply disagreeing with it. There is always going to be a majority opinion on everything; that's just statistics (in fact, I think you've missed the mark with at least half your list of "mainstream opinions"). Having frequently been the _only_ person posting on one side of an issue, I can state with some certainty that the majority of Lystians can carry on a heated debate without resorting to shouting down the opposition or resorting to personal insults, recent anomalous events notwithstanding.
Mistral