I did not watch the debates.

I am just listening to the ground noise rumblings. For now.

As far as your objectivity, I gave up on that when you systematically dismissed my data on climatology and real deficit growth under Republican administrations out of hand. Remember Tom, you’re the guy that is convinced that the bulk of the world’s climatologists are either lying or have deluded themselves so they can get rich off government programs designed to tax the rich and their industries and destroy our 18th century constitutional freedoms. How can anyone who doesn’t have your politics possibly take that lunacy seriously?

Even if my data was not totally conclusive, ( none ever is) and open to alternative interpretation, you simply ignored it because it did not fit your political preconceptions based on your emotional and ideological preferences. And to justify your refusal, you have created this ludicrous fantasy world of sinister leftist organizations and ideologues who are desperate to obscure the truth in order to fund their programs, and take away our freedom, and of course, your money.

Don’t lecture me on your Spock-like logic, Tom. You’re crazier than a bedbug. Now I have a perfectly good working theory WHY you do this, but I have to admit it is just an opinion, and I can’t really prove it. Still, I am at least capable of admitting that to myself. But it still fits the facts a lot better than all your Ayn Rand and Petroleum Institute Tea Party bullshit ravings do.

Remember Tom. I certainly have political opinions, but I do not have a political agenda. I’m not selling any program. That’s your game, whether you realize it or not.

People convinced of their rightness and virtue regardless of any evidence to the contrary sound like pretty good examples of hubris, too.

I acknowledge I’m wrong when someone shows me that I’m wrong. Podrock, Buck, and others have nailed me more than once. They did it by showing me information I didn’t have, showing me that I misinterpreted something, or just showing me that I screwed up some math. This is called “refuting” an argument. While it’s not as fashionable around here as simply attacking the person making the argument, it does happen. If it happened more often, this place would be more interesting.

The world is stuffed to the frigging gills with people who put up firewalls against the obvious to maintain their beliefs (and not just in religion). And not just dummies, either. Now that’s an empirical observation.

There are at least two, maybe three threads in the past couple of weeks where people have simply slammed the shutters down rather than acknowledge facts they didn’t want to deal with, and had no counter to. And this board is a relatively small sampling of humanity.

That alone is an empirical observation you simply refuse to acknowledge.

Arguing with you is like arguing with a fundamentalist religionist (not necessarily Protestant, but even Catholic or Muslim).

I’m not talking about philosophical questions, or deep abstract crap, I’m talking about things like “this number is larger than this one.” I’m talking about saying someone’s statement is false, and willing to prove it by showing the hard records. When you shoot stuff like that down based on some silliness about the subjectivity of observation, you fall flat. It’s like pointing to a full moon in the sky and having someone say “how do you know everyone looking at the moon is seeing a full moon, and not a half one?”

It’s particularly irritating when people switch it on and off depending on what views they like and don’t like.

And yes, people who refuse to admit the existence of facts and evidence that conflict with their worldview are fooling themselves. If they are in positions of power, they can do damage.

You have remarked before how baffled you are that people who otherwise seem intelligent and perceptive and quite capable, somehow do not always arrive at the same conclusions that you do.

You seem to have arrived at the conclusion that they are all either fooling themselves deliberately, because they are weak, scared, insecure, or well…fools. Or, someone has somehow succeeded in fooling them.

Doesn’t that explanation seem just too simple to be right and too easy to be true? It is, you know. The Greeks even had a word for it, ὕβρις.

since there’s no external way to tell if someone is lying, what they know (or believe) about what they’re saying is basically unknowable.

Sorry, just having a bit of fun.

You realize your epistemology needs a bit of work, right? It tends to be somewhat thixotropic – liquid under certain conditions and solid under others.