Debates on Discord?

[teo123]

And I think I have better things to do with my free time than trying to convince some random person on-line to go vegan or vegetarian. Convincing some influential linguist that my linguistic theories are true would mean a lot more to me, and I think I have better chance at succeeding at that.

That might be one of the most selfish comments I have ever read.

See, that's how most of the people behave and think in on-line debates: they don't even try to respond to the point being made (in this case, as the part of my post you didn't quote says, that debating veganism on-line may be not only not productive, but counter-productive), and they intentionally say something they know will provoke an angry response.

[Kaz1983]

I'd recommend Tom Rabbit's server if you're looking to engage in debates,

I'll check it out.

... might be Shadow Starshine and SD (Slaughter House discord server owner). Their servers are packed with people who are willing to debate you.

That guy is interesting to listen to, yeah he's a meat eater and some of his opinions are lame but in general, he holds an interesting position.

[Jebus]

See, that's how most of the people behave and think in on-line debates: they don't even try to respond to the point being made

It's funny that you of all people should write that. I can remember discussions where trying to get you to respond to specific questions was like pulling teeth. See this one as an example: viewtopic.php?f=17&t=4957

Anyway, why are you still here if you are so appalled by how people behave in on-line debates?

and they intentionally say something they know will provoke an angry response.

I assume you are referring to my "selfish" comment. My motivation when writing that comment was not to anger you, but to motivate you to becoming a more productive vegan.

Doing something else in your free time but doing counter-productive vegangelicalism is now selfish?

Why does it have to be counter-productive? Maybe you need to spend some time learning to make better arguments, or maybe you are making good arguments at the wrong time or place.

Selfish is not a binary concept. If you compare two actions, such as promoting something that may lead to less suffering, or promoting your own work that may only lead to personal gain, than you should try to evaluate which one is the more selfish of the two. In this case, I think it's clear that the former action would be considered the less selfish one. You made it sound as if personal satisfaction would be the only reason to promote veganism, i.e. the satisfaction of proving a carnist wrong.

Don't get me wrong, but that sounds quite a bit like cult mentality.

It's amusing how this sentence starts with "Don't get me wrong" and then continues with something that will lead to so many different interpretations. Please make an effort to be more specific when you write.

You will have to define what you mean by "cult mentality" before I respond to that.

[teo123]

I can remember discussions where trying to get you to respond to specific questions was like pulling teeth.

OK, let's move the question you asked in that discussion into another context.
You: If you have access to uncensored Internet, please install this program to help the censored Internet users and enable anonymous and undetectable communication on-line to people who need that.
Me: I don't think that's a good idea. Programs promising that have a terrible track record. FTE is based on an idea that sounds good to the not-so-tech-savvy (attempting to be undetectable by poorly imitating normal HTTP traffic), but that idea is in fact fundamentally flawed (it's possible to detect using some complicated regular expressions, as well as trivial to detect using active probing). SnowFlake is based on a fundamentally good idea (making it look like somebody is watching a streamed cyphered video using a widely used protocol), but it's terribly coded, full of bugs and security issues. Programs promising that tend to be worse than Tor, yet alone Tor with "obfs4" or "meek" enabled. I would like to see good reasons to think the program you are advocating is better than plethora others on the Internet, which are known not to work. Participating in an anonymity program that doesn't actually work is worse than nothing, as it might make people who use it in countries where that's illegal (North Korea, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia...) end up being detected by their ISPs, reported to the government, and end up in jail.
You: So, you are saying you don't value anonymity on the Internet?
Me: I do value it. But it's also important not to be counter-productive.
You: Saying it's likely to be counter-productive sounds rather crazy to me. You must just be looking for excuses, and find it hard to consider different opinions.
Do you see now why your comments are silly?

Anyway, why are you still here if you are so appalled by how people behave in on-line debates?

Because, sometimes, you can have a very reasonable and productive discussion on-line. Like, for instance, here or here.

Maybe you need to spend some time learning to make better arguments, or maybe you are making good arguments at the wrong time or place.

Again, is there any study showing that the advices about how to be better in those vegan/vegetarian/meat-eater debates actually work? If so, which of those advices? I don't see any reason to think they work.

In this case, I think it's clear that the former action would be considered the less selfish one.

I am not so sure. Proving that my theories are right would advance linguistics. Isn't that a good thing? Perhaps even more so than convincing somebody to go vegan/vegetarian?

You will have to define what you mean by "cult mentality" before I respond to that.

Because a cult requires you to dedicate as much time as possible to it.

[Jebus]

OK, let's move the question you asked in that discussion into another context.
You: If you have access to uncensored Internet, please install this program to help the censored Internet users and enable anonymous and undetectable communication on-line to people who need that.
Me: I don't think that's a good idea. Programs promising that have a terrible track record. FTE is based on an idea that sounds good to the not-so-tech-savvy (attempting to be undetectable by poorly imitating normal HTTP traffic), but that idea is in fact fundamentally flawed (it's possible to detect using some complicated regular expressions, as well as trivial to detect using active probing). SnowFlake is based on a fundamentally good idea (making it look like somebody is watching a streamed cyphered video using a widely used protocol), but it's terribly coded, full of bugs and security issues. Programs promising that tend to be worse than Tor, yet alone Tor with "obfs4" or "meek" enabled. I would like to see good reasons to think the program you are advocating is better than plethora others on the Internet, which are known not to work. Participating in an anonymity program that doesn't actually work is worse than nothing, as it might make people who use it in countries where that's illegal (North Korea, Iran, Egypt, Saudi Arabia...) end up being detected by their ISPs, reported to the government, and end up in jail.
You: So, you are saying you don't value anonymity on the Internet?
Me: I do value it. But it's also important not to be counter-productive.
You: Saying it's likely to be counter-productive sounds rather crazy to me. You must just be looking for excuses, and find it hard to consider different opinions.
Do you see now why your comments are silly?

That was one of the worst misrepresentations I've ever read. Go back and read the thread again. My questions were designed simply to clarify your points. Instead of answering my questions you started asking your own questions. I had the courtesy of answering yours. You did not have the courtesy of answering mine.

In fact, at the time you wrote:

I think your questions are slightly missing the point.

If you think a question is irrelevant to the discussion you should explain why rather than just ignoring it.

is there any study showing that the advices about how to be better in those vegan/vegetarian/meat-eater debates actually work? If so, which of those advices?

There you go again with your ridiculous request for a study. Have you ever considered common sense, trial and error and/or the process of elimination? If not, just go ahead and ask another vegan which method they have had success with.

Proving that my theories are right would advance linguistics. Isn't that a good thing?

Sure, that would be a good thing (although I am doubtful that you could do that).

Perhaps even more so than convincing somebody to go vegan/vegetarian?

Think for a moment of all the future suffering that could be avoided if you could convince a meat eater to go vegan. Then, think of the further reduction of suffering if that person convinces another person to go vegan, and so on. The ripple effect could have enormous positive consequences.

I'm actually surprised that I have to explain that to you. I know you are not the sharpest tool in the shed, but you were smart enough to become vegan and you have an interest in things (like linguistics) that other (current and former) Flat Earthers rarely have an interest in. Maybe you just need to make a bit more of an effort to understand these things.

Because a cult requires you to dedicate as much time as possible to it.

Although I admire people (like Earthling Ed) who seems to dedicate as much time as possible to the vegan cause, I don't do that myself and I never suggested that you should do that. I did, however, suggest that it would not be altruistic to replace "vegan time" with "linguistics time".

[teo123]

That was one of the worst misrepresentations I've ever read. Go back and read the thread again.

I don't think that's a misrepresentation. I was arguing that it's immoral to give money to charity if you don't have a good reason to think they will actually end up doing good with that money, because many "charities" are actually anti-capitalist organizations who will use that money to fight sweatshops, many of them don't manage to cross the border, et cetera... And you said I was crazy and not able to consider different opinions.

Have you ever considered common sense,

Common sense is what tells us that the Earth is flat, that the name of the city of Vukovar obviously comes from Croatian for "city of wolves", and that FTE is an excellent way to protect your privacy on-line. And it's not good at social psychology either. People behave and think very counter-intuitively in emergencies, and the same probably goes for debates.

If not, just go ahead and ask another vegan which method they have had success with.

So, tell me, which ones? And what has made you think you had success with them? If you just showed people photos from slaughterhouses, I'd guess you made some of them think "Ah, vegans are just some snowflakes from the cities who can't watch an animal being slaughtered.", and some of them go vegan for a while and then returning to their previous diets because they are convinced humans need to eat meat to be healthy.

although I am doubtful that you could do that

Listen, it's hard to judge. My theory of the Croatian toponyms is, as far as I know, the only one that's based partly on computational linguistics, rather than just on old-fashioned guessing, and that's certainly a big advantage for it. I am also, as far as I know, the only one who has even attempted to reconstruct the Illyrian grammar to a degree that you can translate some texts into Illyrian.
Dubravka Ivšić told me that the most critical error is that I am not citing the historical sources and older literature (Antun Mayer, and other Croatian linguists from the early 20th century) on my web-page enough. Well, the text I am trying to publish certainly solves that problem. Where I am stuck is that one of the editors of the Požega Journal of Ethnology told me he would edit my text and send it back to me... and he hasn't sent it back to me for months now. However, I am pretty sure it's just a matter of time when my paper gets published. Now, the reactions of professional linguists to it are, of course, harder to predict.

Then, think of the further reduction of suffering if that person convinces another person to go vegan, and so on. 

Again, the key word here is "if". What if you repel somebody from veganism because you make them think all vegans are stupid and uninformed? And what if they then talks to their friends about how stupid vegans are, and repels even more people from veganism?

 I did, however, suggest that it would not be altruistic to replace "vegan time" with "linguistics time".

Why exactly? If I end up being a famous linguist, that would certainly make many people go vegan partly because of that. Think of how many people are socialist because of Noam Chomsky being one. Of course, it's very unlikely I'll become world-famous as Chomsky, but it's not as unlikely I'll become famous in Croatia.

[Jebus]

@teo123 I have to give up here. If you understood a little bit of what I'm trying to teach you it would be worthwhile for me to continue to reply, but you don't seem to understand or agree with anything.

[teo123]

@ I have to give up here. If you understood a little bit of what I'm trying to teach you it would be worthwhile for me to continue to reply, but you don't seem to understand or agree with anything.

Honestly, you are even more frustrating than when Christians say "The Bible doesn't say that!" without even attempting to explain what it actually says according to them. There is no need for hermeneutics here, you are here to explain me what you actually meant and how I supposedly misinterpreted you.

[teo123]

Anyway, I've made a thread about vegetarianism on a Latin language forum, I suspect you can have a reasonable discussion there. It doesn't matter if your Latin is bad, mine is not very good either.