[DiseasedBadger]

You are covering these people with a cloak of ideas that they don't have.

FEs do not have ideas. They are not examining anything. They are not courageous.

What they have is a cult of inconsistent, disingenuous rhetoric. They contradict themselves constantly. They are not reasoning, they are jumping from over verbal attack to another. They have decided that the best response to a life empty of "winning internet arguments"... is to just pretend they won.

This is a social cult of people telling eachother that their empty word blocks amount to ideas. Telling eachother that their refusal to think is intellectual integrity. That their refusal to consider is superior knowledge. That their willingness to purport to believe in nonsense, is somehow radical and valuable.

Don't humor them. It won't change anything. They can't magically become smarter, especially if they value the 'feeling of knowing', more than learning.

[addicted]

It’s like the FE who designed an experiment that he said would conclusively prove whether the earth was flat or spherical. It seems he actually designed a legitimate experiment, because its results showed that the earth was spherical.

To your point, of course his and his followers’ response has been to try and identify the error in the design of their experiment. I suspect a few months from now we will never hear of this experiment and it will go down their memory holes.

[GaryNumanVevo]

It's already happened, they purchased a 20,000$ laser gyroscope, measured the spin of the earth to be 15 deg / hr. And quietly hit the results. They aren't after truth. They're about furthering the lie, and profiting off merch / etc.

[roenxi]

While much of what you say is undoubtedly true, it also clearly applies to a very large number of political bodies, not to mention religious groups, academic societies and businesses.

My read of this comment is both that the ideas and the people who espouse them are not respectable. Half of that is on point, but half of that is not feasible. There are too many people in the world who are wrong about things to start disrespecting people for being wrong. Groups of people command some level of respect, even when they are being actively foolish.