CategorySerious/WhatIsThePoint

• It's not productive - ToothyWikizens aren't in a position to do anything about the state of the world anyway.
  
• Unlike going on a course or reading a textbook, it's not informative - you're not going to learn anything either from other people who've not gone on courses or read textbooks either, nor from ones that have but prefer jeering at your ill-informed comments to actually bothering to share what they know.
  

• People might know different sets of things on a subject
  
• It is allegedly possible for people to actually share information by talking
  
• People might be interested in seeing other people's reactions to their views and thoughts, such as they are
  
• It brings some semblance of balance to a site otherwise consisting solely of Stuff, MagicTheGathering and CategoryAnime.
  

Of course we can't figure it out entirely. But it's an interesting diversion! If I'm uninformed but not unintelligent and have a certain view, surely I can become better-informed, and come to understand the situation a little better, by discussing with other uninformed but not unintelligent people who hold other views, and by pointing one another towards relevant facts. We're lucky here on ToothyWiki to have a fairly wide range of views - why not share them and further develop our own viewpoints as a result? I believe that the question to ask is not 'Why do it?' but 'Why not do it?' I agree that we're a bit divorced from the real world here - but we're quite happy like that. The real world is dirty, boring, banal, often pointless, and it's full of stupid uninformed people who couldn't give a damn for their fellows - and what's more, we can't do a thing about it. I know that it's not my subject - but then neither is anything in CategorySerious, CategoryChristian or PoliticalMatters, and I post about it anyway. Because I enjoy it. I'm not looking to figure out international politics. I'm not pretending to be an authority. I'm looking to have an interesting discussion, and I'm (occasionally) beta-testing various views and arguments so people can show me all the logical inconsistencies and factual errors. And there's nothing wrong with that. --Requiem

Good points :) - SunKitten

Go into a random pub and try starting a serious conversation about the situation in, say, northern ireland or palestine.  If the people you are talking with happen to feel like a serious conversation then you may get one.  But if they are not, you won't.  They may not talk of popes and anti-popes, but the result will be the same.  I've found people at Cambridge University to be entirely capable and willing to discuss serious subjects seriously.  But not all the time.  Just like any other group.  Did you think Cambridge was special? --DR

Requiem wipes rhetoric off his monitor... - You weren't attacking this discussion in particular. You were attacking the concept of having these discussions. Which I duly defended. Allow me to re-phrase (I apologise for the semantic chess-playing): I talk. With friends. About Stuff. They talk back. We see where our views are silly. Perhaps. Maybe we can make better views because we talk about Stuff. This is the concept of 'conversation about Stuff'. I like it. If I never asked other people, how could I learn that I was wrong?

Addendum. I'm interested in figuring out and understanding everything. As this is an impossible task, I need all the help I can get ^_^ --Requiem

Apologies. A clearer statement would have been "I'm not looking to figure out international politics, because by all accounts I'm unqualified to do so. I'm perhaps looking to understand a little of the problems in the area so I can form a better viewpoint." But, you see, that's a bit long-winded and fluffy. --Requiem

Yet you seem to have no objections to making your own "set the world to rights" proposals, which typically seem to involve the US armed forces. If you are indeed more erudite than us, would you care to share your knowledge rather than keeping it all locked away in your head while thumbing your nose at us, since informing people is in fact usually much of the point of posting in a forum? If, as you appear to say above, you are just as ill-informed as you think we are, yet you feel it's OK for you to post, why complain when we do? For that matter, consider our debates on the subjects of crypto/security. I attended the courses at university, read a wide range of related textbooks and still keep up with relevant publications and papers; you (one assumes) did not. Yet you still feel yourself competent to debate with me (unless that's someone else who posts in a similar style - it's hard to tell since you never sign anything!). How does that square with the stance you have set out? - MoonShadow

And if you think that partially uninformed people sitting around talking about world issues happens only in Cambridge, then I'd suggest that it is your perception that is deficient. It's just that we're (for the most part) scientists, compscis, mathmos and other types who are trained in logic and used to hypothetical intellectual fencing. So that's the way our discussion comes out. Author flavours the text, and all that. --Requiem

This is unfair. People posting to this forum on such subjects are typically interested in learning by pooling their knowledge, or by getting people who have more knowledge than them to summarise it and respond to questions, points and propositions in a constructive and informative manner. They typically respond amiably to being pointed at resources available on the internet that they can read. They also, yes, enjoy talking about things, and no, they typically don't tend to devote offline time to most matters they discuss on ToothyWiki. This does not usually mean they learn nothing new, although I am sure that may be true in some cases. Requiem has said all this above, and myself and AlexChurchill said the same things to you last time this came up.  - MoonShadow

I'd say that 'increasing my knowledge' is a subset of 'fun conversation'. --Requiem

Everyone is aware of different aspects of the situation. Just because people haven't studied it at university or read your favourite textbook doesn't mean they don't read newspapers, listen to radio reports, watch TV, read encyclopedia articles and websites, and use Google. By exchanging facts, everyone finds out more. Heck, some people might buy textbooks on the subject specifically to read them and actually condescend to summarising relevant parts for the rest of us rather than just bragging about it - wouldn't that be useful? - MoonShadow

Why this assumption that one person has to start out knowing absolutely everything and everyone else being totally perfectly ignorant? It only works that way in university lectures for really obscure subjects.. - MoonShadow

Unfortunately in situations when it is hard to distinguish the ill- and well- informed, such discussion never results in significant information transfer, as the nuggets of truth and insight are mixed so thouroughly with either ill-informed nonsense or spin-engendered propaganda. The interleaved nature of discussion on the wiki makes this all the more pronounced --Gwyntar

I suppose it comes down to where you think the balance lies. If someone is convinced we're all mostly spouting nonsense, and doesn't feel like passing correct information on to us, they might be better served holding their discussions somewhere more erudite. If someone finds talking here profitable, for whatever reason, and/or makes an effort to be helpful and contribute something useful, why stop them? - MoonShadow

Yes. - MoonShadow

That response illustrates perfectly the quintessential nature of the attitude the complainant takes issue with --Gwyntar

Well, as I repeatedly attempt to illustrate elsewhere it was a bit of a false dichotomy, of precisely the sort that I take issue with. - MoonShadow

Yes, I do that with quite a number of subjects, albeit they happen to be ones that are slightly less popular here. For the rest - the ones I'm curious about that have a lower priority - I ask other people what they know / think - or set out what I know/think, implicitly inviting them to correct, rebut and/or fill in the gaps. Some of them bother; some of these are better informed than others. Others just tell me to shut up and go read a book. It's a funny old world, isn't it? - MoonShadow

Because, at the end of the day, if I did this with every single point I was interested in then I'd never have time for anything else. As far as I'm concerned I'm interested in knowing as much as I can about everything, and because I'm an extraverted person I discuss things with others as a way of learning. There aren't enough days in a life to take a course in everything I'm interested in. But in the humanities and arts, I can talk to others about the subject and there's the possibility they'll know something I'm interested in. I enjoy gathering random information. At the same time, I want to know which of my views are not only silly but actually objectively wrong, and I can only find that out by discussion. At the same time as those two interests, I enjoy intellectual and logical mind games, so that comes through in my friendly banter with the others participating in the discussion. Oh - and going on a course or reading books isn't 'figuring things out'; it's being told what other people have figured out. This is 'figuring things out' - where somebody attacks a position and our stance on it is the stronger for having had to defend it. Thank you. --Requiem goes away and tries to find the time to write an essay on "The uninformed but intelligent conversation as a social construct: is it worth having?"

1. Many people find interactive discussion a much quicker way both of refining their own positions and judging the worth of the positions of others.  There is a similarity here to the open source dictum of "release early and often". --DR

There's a lot to be said for open-source politics. --Requiem

2. Even if you havn't got the time to really study up on some problems (eg the links between IMF policies, third world debt, and third world GDP growth rates), it is worth picking up enough of the basics to spot when a politician is trying to fast talk you on the subject, or to know whose opinion on whether the politician is bullshitting or not to trust when it comes to election times. --DR