[jlgreco]

If I said "it is obvious that the world is billions of years old", would you object? Plainly there are (many) people that disagree with that statement, but do you think that would change the legitimacy of that statement?

These are things put in the realm of "opinion", but I think we can safely discard fringe notions like "the world is 3000 years old" or "the disparate effect of the War on Drugs on minorities that is accelerated by hard-line stances and rapidly advancing law enforcement technology and techniques is acceptable."[0]

[0] Read: "That stuff that concerns David Simon, @jivatmanx, and myself."

[anigbrowl]

Yes, I would object. It's not obvious that the world is billions of years old, so I think it's a good thing to mention however briefly, that our knowledge of such things is founded on the study of geology, chemistry and so forth, unless you're talking to someone whose views/level of knowledge you're already familiar with.

You weaken your own argument when you go around stating your opinion as fact, and it's not very different from people saying things like 'obviously long prison sentences reduce crime' or 'obviously excluding immigrants will relieve unemployment' or 'obviously the point of prison is punishment.'

[jlgreco]

I don't think anyone but a loon or a pedant would object to a comment, in a thread about geology, that implied the ancient nature of the earth was obvious. I am afraid that I find it difficult to care about the objections of either loons or pedants. They may think my argument is weakened, and I consider that an acceptable loss. I already go out of my way to qualify much of what I say, I have little interest in further encumbering myself.

(You are the later, of course?)

[vertr07]

Way out of line. It is pretty clear from your comments that you automatically think that anyone who disagrees with you is an idiot. That's funny given the lack of depth your thinking demonstrates so far.

Arguing that your opponent's argument is a "fringe notion" and throwing it in with another irrelevant example of a fringe notion is a pathetic excuse for a counter. You actually have to write a direct counter-argument instead of relying on dismissiveness and fallacy. But hey, acting like an asshole is definitely the easier way.

[jlgreco]

Is anybody here actually arguing that the War on Drugs is not extraordinarily problematic? As far as I can tell nobody is.

anigbrowl is being pedantic about the term "obvious" but does not seem to actually disagree (The thread you are responding to is about effective communication, on which anigbrowl and I disagree, but I do not think that he is an idiot for disagreeing with me on this point.)

mpyne doesn't seem to disagree that it is problematic (he brought up David Simon after all... in fact his response to me makes me think that we both agree that both situations are problematic), but thinks it is not practical to change the state of affairs. I, again, disagree with that, but I certainly do not think that he is an idiot for thinking that the realities of the situation preclude meaningful change.

mindsling takes exception to my caricature of privacy advocates who are frustrated with recent media attention to their cause, but I think I have explained myself there well enough. I do not think that mindsling is an idiot.

(If I've mischaracterized anybodies position here, please correct me, but as I have interpreted everyones' comments currently I don't think that anybody here is an idiot.)

[mpyne]

I don't like the "War on Drugs", no. I'm the kind of person who would remove 80% of the safety labels out there if I had my way, so someone choosing to do something stupid with drugs is on them as far as I'm concerned, up and until it starts affecting other people.

And even where it does start affecting other people, there are probably much better ways to regulate that effect than prison, and we should be using those ways instead. And we should switchover yesterday.

It's probably not yet practical politically to fix that (especially as its so tied toward racist tendencies dog-whistle style), but that would not be a reason for me to argue in support of it.

However I also don't presume that shedding the War on Drugs would eliminate crime, or the need to investigate and prosecute such. So we'll still have government enforcing law, protecting public security, and the like. And so I get very, very tired of the argument that government trying to get power $FOO to do such things is necessarily a dystopian power grab.

Don't get me wrong, it may actually be a bad idea for government to do $FOO, but no one is generally going to convince me of that by hyperbole or invoking the Sheeple Mantra (not saying you're doing that here, btw, just remarking on some HN threads I remember in general).

[anigbrowl]

I don't think anyone but a loon or a pedant would object to a comment, in a thread about geology

Wait a minute, you didn't say anything about 'a thread about geology.' In fact, I was the person who brought that into the conversation. Discussions and misapprehensions about the age of the earth seem more likely to crop up in conversations about religion or general science or ancient history.

You've got a nerve critiquing me for being a pedant when you're retroactively redefining the terms of your argument like that.