Reply #103: First, please stop whining; it's annoying [View All]

Second, yes, words have meaning. If you bend and twist the meaning, then you're subverting the process of communication. That's annoying, too.

"By MY standard," "rational" in this case means having a logical reason for believing something did or did not happen. I happen to believe it really does matter what really happened on 9/11, and "by MY standard," doing the best possible job of figuring that out means objectively applying valid logic to credible facts in order to arrive at the most likely estimation of reality. "Truthers" seem to want to take a shortcut and use their intuitions, and then try to rationalize it. But "by MY standard" that's a highly inferior and unreliable method (especially if you have paranoid intuitions), and it's easy to demonstrate what's irrational about it: On examination, their conclusions never quite follow logically from the credible facts. If I'm wrong about that, it should be equally easy for you to point out where I'm going wrong. Instead, when "truthers" argue themselves into a corner, I get accusations about my motives for doing so. So even if you did succeed in subverting the meaning of the word "rational," then we'd just need to find some other word to distinguish rational beliefs from paranoid speculations and conclusions arrived at with dubious facts and/or invalid logic. Then, you would have to attack the new word, and that would be annoying to have to keep searching for new words just to spare your feelings.

Why can't I "just see it differently" than you and stop insulting your irrational beliefs? Why can't you stop insulting my intelligence? You seem to miss that the real issue here is not what you believe; it's what you are attempting to get others to believe, and whether or not I'm on your target list is irrelevant. When you claim that something did or did not happen, you are making a claim about objective reality that is either right or wrong. That's completely different from expressing a subjective opinion that is neither right nor wrong. "By MY standards," not all opinions about objective reality are created equally, and demanding respect for poorly formed ones that you are repeatedly attempting to foist upon others, after repeatedly showing contempt for logical reasoning, is annoying.

And furthermore, I am obviously not "threatened" by your poorly formed views of objective reality, since I give you every opportunity to "challenge {my} world view" and demonstrate that yours is more rational. You are the one who keeps whining about people challenging yours -- and trying to use that whining to dodge actually answering the challenges, as you did with the post you responded to -- so it's quite clear to me who is having difficulty handling challenges around here. No, I am not at all concerned that reason will lose out to nonsense, unless it goes unchallenged. Your hypocrisy is as annoying as your whining.