I've rarely seen employees bullying posters.
No, now that SKR is gone that doesn't happen.
I don't see a problem with preemptive thread locking. Some things prove not to be good topics. Like the one on gun control, where by the end I was flagging posts on both sides.
Then again, I'm starting to notice that even topics on equality can't be discussed anymore without having to flag people, and not just in this forum.
So stop flagging people!
Jeez...
*tosses down a yellow penalty flag*
Meatrace, ten yards!
Sorry, bit of a compulsion :P
I only flag posts if they personally attack me.
Or if I'm bored.
It's because it's a friendly conversation and nobody is being rude...
As soon as people saying things like I love America more than you because of X or you hate America because of Y then the conversation is dead and should be locked.
Meh. Once you've seen Scott Betts fight with Andrew R., you don't really need to see it ever again.
Andrew R? Scott Betts? What silly, made-up names.
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I also miss some of the breadth and depth of conversations from several years ago. I understand some people get upset with the ideas presented/challenged.
I'm guessing some of those threads take up too much time of the forum monitors, so they've decided to just shut them down before they start, which is too bad. I like having these discussions, even when no agreement is reached and both sides will never agree, I still learn things. Either things people say, or things I have to look up to formulate my posts.
Edit: To add, I started the gun thread. I do so with purpose in mind, but I also tried to push mostly towards facts with that first post, not just entirely towards my goal, but towards a broader goal that is generally fairly agreeable (at least I hoped).
Obviously, other people would rather not discuss that topic here and flagged the thread enough it got locked.
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I also miss some of the breadth and depth of conversations from several years ago. I understand some people get upset with the ideas presented/challenged.
I'm guessing some of those threads take up too much time of the forum monitors, so they've decided to just shut them down before they start, which is too bad. I like having these discussions, even when no agreement is reached and both sides will never agree, I still learn things. Either things people say, or things I have to look up to formulate my posts.
Edit: To add, I started the gun thread. I do so with purpose in mind, but I also tried to push mostly towards facts with that first post, not just entirely towards my goal, but towards a broader goal that is generally fairly agreeable (at least I hoped).
Obviously, other people would rather not discuss that topic here and flagged the thread enough it got locked.
Thanks, Irontruth--an excellent encapsulation of my feelings.
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If you are conservative walking into an otd on Paizo, you might as well come strapped like Bill Burr did, walking into this rude heckling audience in Philadelphia. It's not like you're going to convince nobody of anything.Unfortunately due to some people over in OTD, Conservatives of all stripes are completely unwelcome and would do well to not give their opinion at all. Especially due to communist goblins, rabid wolves and gambling thugs not to mention employees bullying posters. I only come to Paizo for online pbp games and occasionally browsing the advice columns, . Otherwise, I avoid Paizo like the plague.When did it get weird?
I thought we still had Communist Goblins, Aussie Constitutionals, New England Liberals, Western Gun Lovers, Closet Conservatives and Economic Progressives all engaging in topics that would go nuclear anywhere else?Have y'all been out on the interwebz? Those people are CRAZY.
I may not post but I lurk, oh I lurk. This is likely the most civil forum on the wide webs world.
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If you are conservative walking into an otd on Paizo, you might as well come strapped like Bill Burr did, walking into this rude heckling audience in Philadelphia. It's not like you're going to convince nobody of anything.
Funny, that's precisely how I feel as a progressive. From BOTH sides. At least the conservatives on the boards don't give each other endless crap about not being conservative enough. Not that I've seen anyway.
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If you are conservative walking into an otd on Paizo, you might as well come strapped like Bill Burr did, walking into this rude heckling audience in Philadelphia. It's not like you're going to convince nobody of anything.Unfortunately due to some people over in OTD, Conservatives of all stripes are completely unwelcome and would do well to not give their opinion at all. Especially due to communist goblins, rabid wolves and gambling thugs not to mention employees bullying posters. I only come to Paizo for online pbp games and occasionally browsing the advice columns, . Otherwise, I avoid Paizo like the plague.When did it get weird?
I thought we still had Communist Goblins, Aussie Constitutionals, New England Liberals, Western Gun Lovers, Closet Conservatives and Economic Progressives all engaging in topics that would go nuclear anywhere else?Have y'all been out on the interwebz? Those people are CRAZY.
I may not post but I lurk, oh I lurk. This is likely the most civil forum on the wide webs world.
Cannot agree with a large part of what he said but god that was pretty funny
Huh. I get feedback from people all the time about how I've changed their minds.
Vive le Galt!
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The OTD section of the Boards was the go-to place for philosophical, well-thought and well-written, intellectually- and socially-engaged, well, off-topic discussions--things that didn't necessarily define the gamer stereotype, things about which--and not surprising to actual gamers--we were intensely passionate!
I don't suppose you could provide an example of such?
Funny, that's precisely how I feel as a progressive. From BOTH sides. At least the conservatives on the boards don't give each other endless crap about not being conservative enough. Not that I've seen anyway.
If you are conservative walking into an otd on Paizo, you might as well come strapped like Bill Burr did, walking into this rude heckling audience in Philadelphia. It's not like you're going to convince nobody of anything.
That would just open up a random snipe about "no true Scotsman." It's easier to just say "I hope you choke on your f*!&ing philly cheesesteak," and wait for profit.
Funny, that's precisely how I feel as a progressive. From BOTH sides. At least the conservatives on the boards don't give each other endless crap about not being conservative enough. Not that I've seen anyway.
If you are conservative walking into an otd on Paizo, you might as well come strapped like Bill Burr did, walking into this rude heckling audience in Philadelphia. It's not like you're going to convince nobody of anything.
Not calling you out on it, because I roll in like Bill Burr any more, but maybe it's the mechanism behind a self-fulfilling prophecy.
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If you are conservative walking into an otd on Paizo, you might as well come strapped like Bill Burr did, walking into this rude heckling audience in Philadelphia. It's not like you're going to convince nobody of anything.
It's funny, I find that ACTUAL conservative values and ACTUAL liberal values are generally welcome by the vast majority of people I encounter in life and online (a.k.a. not real life). I find that the values of lobbyists, establishment politicians, and various monied interests are about as popular as cancer when they are not properly sugar coated. I don't find this to be very surprising, but rather a refreshing reminder that people are capable of caring about things other then celebrity gossip.
Want to talk about lowering taxes and more personal freedom, I'm all ears. However, if you are telling me trickle down economics is real, and climate change is a myth, you better bring some serious facts to the table or you deserve to get laughed at.
EDIT: I can't say I have ever seen a thread locked preemptively for anything other then housekeeping reason (e.g. duplicate thread, violates terms, etc.) I'm generally surprised that many threads are allowed to go on, and people are allowed to be generally hostile and insulting to Paizo staff. If I ruled the world of Paizo message boards, I would be a lot harsher, and put my company profits ahead of allowing everyone to mouth off about many of these issues.
Want to talk about lowering taxes and more personal freedom, I'm all ears. However, if you are telling me trickle down economics is real, and climate change is a myth, you better bring some serious facts to the table or you deserve to get laughed at.
You're talking to a guy who's been told Milton Friedman was just a shill and Marx's Labor Theory of Value has a lot of merit....(I guess Marx was above all that objectivity questioning stuff). I doubt that your "serious facts" litmus is anything more than subjective for the vast majority.
I got no beef with climate change, my main observation is based on a necessity for an estimated 80% utilization reduction that I gleaned from a scientist studying the Greenland melt from Vice News. I seriously don't see anybody who believes in global warming doing that, just recycling their beer bottles, driving a Honda Civic, sticking their thumb in and pulling out a plum and saying "what a good boy am I."
So forgive me if I don't get all excited. I'm waiting for Al Gore to move into a 20 x 20 apartment because his mansion's electric bill is higher than my monthly mortgage.
So, in essence, f*+& the Liberty Bell.
Then there is also the issue that climate change is going to have only negative consequences. There may be positive effects of climate change.
Oh fer cryin' out loud, enough with the climate change! If you're going to derail the thread, could you at least fixate on a PTL subject, just for irony's sake? :P
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Will climate change mean people enforce abortion policies? =)
Then there is also the issue that climate change is going to have only negative consequences. There may be positive effects of climate change.
That's not much of an issue. I don't know of anyone who suggests that the effects of climate change will be without exception negative. I also don't know of anyone sensible who suggests that the outcome will overall be positive.
If nothing else, humanity has developed over the past several thousand years to take advantage of the climate as it exists today. That's why, for example, the country of Bangladesh has about 150 million people -- because it can support that many. Chad has only ten million people, and NIger 17 million, because they can't.
IF your link is correct -- that's far from obvious, as mainstream prediction suggest global warming will speed up African desertification, not reverse it -- that still doesn't help the 150 million Bangladeshi who are threatened by rising sea levels. I doubt that the 50,000 or so Greenland farmers will be able to feed the climate refugees, or to accept tens of millions of new Bangladeshi immigrants.....
Then there is also the issue that climate change is going to have only negative consequences. There may be positive effects of climate change.
There's also a question of what the natural variability is. Climate science gives an answer and says we're potentially outside it.
Archaeology, on the other hand, says that climate science is full of crap. Mainly, in that they've been discovering Viking villages uncovered as the Greenland ice recedes. This suggests Earth of around 1000 years ago was much warmer than today. Note this provides the best evidence yet that dramatic climate change is real, which makes it even more ironic.
It's interesting to watch the two sciences interact.
Now, to derail this derail... Which do you think is more likely? Humans going to space, or humans staying on the planet?
I could be wrong, but I don't think climate science says we're currently outside "natural variability", but that we're headed out at high speed. Climate scientists are generally aware of the Medieval Warm Period, I would assume. There's also some evidence it was localized, not a global warming, so that while global temperatures may be higher now, the North Atlantic could have been warmer then.
You would be surprised how many people who support climate change still try to deny the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age actually happened. There were a number of scientists who tried to debunk it; one of the few attempts not taken offline can be found here. Ultimately, however, they all had to quiet down when the Viking villages started to be uncovered.
From what I've heard from some of my colleagues in the field of environmental lobbying, there's still climate scientists who believe the Little Ice Age is "denialist propaganda," but who keep quiet on that belief because they have been told that viewpoint will get them blackballed in the climate science community.
Edit: To add to this, there is the general assumption that Earth's climate back then has the same climatic distributions as Earth's climate today. In order for that to be false, it would mean the entire planet underwent a major climatic shift where it comes to climate distribution around the time of the Little Ice Age. This is something a lot of climate scientists refuse to entertain because it brings up a rather bad possibility for them: That if it happened back then, it may also be happening now, and might actually not be a result of humanity's actions.
That's also why it is they have tried to look for signs humanity caused the Little Ice Age; so far, they're blaming the Native Americans.
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What Viking villages? My ears perk up when somebody says vikings, pirates, or Kristy Swanson.
I could be wrong, but I don't think climate science says we're currently outside "natural variability", but that we're headed out at high speed. Climate scientists are generally aware of the Medieval Warm Period, I would assume. There's also some evidence it was localized, not a global warming, so that while global temperatures may be higher now, the North Atlantic could have been warmer then.You would be surprised how many people who support climate change still try to deny the Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age actually happened. There were a number of scientists who tried to debunk it; one of the few attempts not taken offline can be found here. Ultimately, however, they all had to quiet down when the Viking villages started to be uncovered.
From what I've heard from some of my colleagues in the field of environmental lobbying, there's still climate scientists who believe the Little Ice Age is "denialist propaganda," but who keep quiet on that belief because they have been told that viewpoint will get them blackballed in the climate science community.
Edit: To add to this, there is the general assumption that Earth's climate back then has the same climatic distributions as Earth's climate today. In order for that to be false, it would mean the entire planet underwent a major climatic shift where it comes to climate distribution around the time of the Little Ice Age. This is something a lot of climate scientists refuse to entertain because it brings up a rather bad possibility for them: That if it happened back then, it may also be happening now, and might actually not be a result of humanity's actions.
That's also why it is they have tried to look for signs humanity caused the Little Ice Age; so far, they're blaming the Native Americans.
From my understanding, the viking villages weren't covered in ice. One that was found buried and preserved was covered in sand, which is definitely not ice.
During the Little Ice Age increased glacier growth, but the glaciers didn't descend from the highlands to come down and cover the fjords where the vikings typically made their settlements. What did happen was that the glaciers either cause landslides, which either directly covered areas, or altered river flows, which also destroyed settlements.
This is pretty typical of living down stream of a nearby glacier. When something about the glacier changes, it has drastic impacts on those living in the valleys along the way to the sea.
Also, the Little Ice Age is not controversial among climate scientists. It's pretty firmly accepted and rooted in the science involved. Exact dates are up to discussion and vary quite a bit from one location to another (the cold happened earlier in one place, more severely in another, etc).
There's also plenty of evidence suggesting the amount of change during the Little Ice Age is well within the natural variations of the past 12,000 years. There have been warm and cool periods approximately every 1500 years (1470±500), and the LIA is well within the typical variation of those events. It's just given a little more focus because the human records during that time are much more prevalent than any other previous event.
There is plenty debate on the causes of the LIA, but no debate on its existence.
I'm sure there is debate among lobbyists on whether to acknowledge such a thing though, but that isn't involving science.
Also, there is no debate about the source of the increased CO2 in the atmosphere. It's all grounded in chemistry that is 100+ years old. If someone could disprove that science, they'd probably get their name in the history books for making such a huge advance in chemistry.
We're talking Curie, Faraday or Nobel type place in history.
Irontruth, I'm not saying you're wrong (like, at all, dude, I agree with you) but let's just try to this thread civilly on topic, instead derailing into subjects which could well get it preemptively locked.
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I felt pretty civil there.
Perhaps you and I could form a union to help keep it more civil. We could call it a civil union.
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Also, there is no debate about the source of the increased CO2 in the atmosphere. It's all grounded in chemistry that is 100+ years old. If someone could disprove that science, they'd probably get their name in the history books for making such a huge advance in chemistry.
We're talking Curie, Faraday or Nobel type place in history.
Actually there is debate on the effects, and if in fact climate change is man made or a natural process. The fact that you present this as "no debate" is partially why so many threads devolve into a fight/shouting match or get locked and also why so many people avoid this terrible section of the board. That and the nature or politics in general.
Not talking about the specifics of climate change but the "no debate" mentality that goes into - oh so many posts over here - is the problem. That's where the fighting begins, when you come into it (it being any thread or post) with that mentality. Specifics do not matter: gay marriage, guns and gun control, abortion, Goblins and their love of Quab, it's all going to end badly.
Anyway
Also, there is no debate about the source of the increased CO2 in the atmosphere. It's all grounded in chemistry that is 100+ years old. If someone could disprove that science, they'd probably get their name in the history books for making such a huge advance in chemistry.
We're talking Curie, Faraday or Nobel type place in history.
Actually there is debate on the effects, and if in fact climate change is man made or a natural process. The fact that you present this as "no debate" is partially why so many threads devolve into a fight/shouting match or get locked and also why so many people avoid this terrible section of the board. That and the nature or politics in general.
Not talking about the specifics of climate change but the "no debate" mentality that goes into - oh so many posts over here - is the problem. That's where the fighting begins, when you come into it (it being any thread or post) with that mentality. Specifics do not matter: gay marriage, guns and gun control, abortion, Goblins and their love of Quab, it's all going to end badly.
Anyway
The science of chemistry and physics could care less what my, or your, political affiliation is.
Definitely no debate about the CO2 as far as I'm concerned. And even if they prove that it's not causing the planet to warm, the vast number of other nasty effects high levels of it have are enough for humanity to work to reduce CO2 output. If anything, disproving CO2 is causing planetary heating might be the necessary step to true progress in reducing our output; even the staunchest business supporter cares about their own health.
As for the viking villages covered by ice? First article about excavations of Viking settlements is back in 2001, but covers land that is covered in sediment. For the ones covered in ice, you merely need to compare the maps in this article and note the ice extends over several Viking settlement ruins for the area it covered during the Little Ice Age.
As for scientists saying the Little Ice Age didn't happen: I already linked to evidence of that. Note that evidence is from 2005.
The issue of it potentially being natural? That's an even scarier picture, and why it is we really, really want it to be man-caused. It's also incredibly unlikely; even if humanity is not causing it through CO2, we still have urbanization, our changes to the water vapor cycle of numerous locations, our changes to the geographies and life distributions, the amount of waste-heat our technology dumps into the air, other chemical pollution with other greenhouse gases, and a massive number of other items that humanity has done which will each need to be ruled out. It's a pretty safe bet we're altering climate. Unfortunately, once the possibility is raised, the problem becomes that it becomes never-ending fodder for arguing that the modern warming is also natural and weakens the position of climate science. Sadly, climate science is wrapped up heavily in politics, and thus really can't afford to weaken itself too much.
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Guys I like a good climate change "debate" as much as the next person, but that is not the topic of interest on this thread. Feel free to open another thread in OT about the topic however.
Note, that 2005 article doesn't say the cooling period didn't happen. Rather it describes the term and definition as a global event to be inaccurate. It doesn't deny the cooling period in the Northern hemisphere. It argues that because the dates are not synchronous between the North and South hemispheres.
Also, that alternating variations between Northern and Southern hemispheres have been observed, so stronger evidence would be needed than currently had to call such a thing a global climate event.
Unusually cold, dry winters in central Europe (e.g., 1 to 2°C below normal during the late 17th century) were very likely to have been associated with more frequent flows of continental air from the north-east (Wanner et al., 1995; Pfister, 1999). Such conditions are consistent (Luterbacher et al., 1999) with the negative or enhanced easterly wind phase of the NAO (Sections 2.2.2.3 and 2.6.5), which implies both warm and cold anomalies over different regions in the North Atlantic sector. Such strong influences on European temperature demonstrate the difficulty in extrapolating the sparse early information about European climate change to the hemispheric, let alone global, scale.
They aren't disputing the change in temperature. They just find the term inaccurate to explain the data. It also goes on to note that climate data for that period is very sparse for the Southern hemisphere.
Thus current evidence does not support globally synchronous periods of anomalous cold or warmth over this timeframe, and the conventional terms of Little Ice Age and Medieval Warm Period appear to have limited utility in describing trends in hemispheric or global mean temperature changes in past centuries.
They're not saying the cooling in specific areas didn't happen. Rather that because the dates of cooling differ between regions, it might not have been a truly global synchronous event, and referring to it as such is of little utility.
This really gets into the debate of causation, rather than existence. Scientists don't debate that Europe cooled in the 1600's. They are debating why though.
Except that he titles his paper "Medieval Warm Period and the Little Ice Age Myths" and puts the following as the summary sentence at the top:
"Surface temperatures at the beginning of the last millennium were higher than in later years. However, the difference had nothing to do with the so-called Medievel Warm Period and the Little Ice Age. It was a result of the steadily falling trend."
He ends it by concluding the geological event didn't happen and that nothing was out of the norm. He, basically, is arguing that the event never happened instead of arguing that it was a lot less of an impact than some people think (and the lesser impact bit is true... unless you were in Greenland at the time). If he were merely debating the causation, I wouldn't have linked him; there was a similar paper that used similar data and debated causation instead of existence and I skipped over it.
Notice, however, that a more accurate data table provided here shows that some data constructions depict a rather remarkable temperature difference and that the Little Ice Age is accepted as an actual period in Northern Hemisphere history.
Next time I bring up climate change-
Instant thread lock!
But really, it was just a throw away example, not worth derailing the thread over.
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The science of chemistry and physics coul......SighJust out of idle curiosity, is there any topic where where you'd consider a "no debate" mentality appropriate?
If we had a Flat Earther in here, for example?
Flat Earth =/= Climate change and politically charged discussions about energy, pollution, right vs. left and intense partisan hatred that surrounds it.
Not even on the same page,...I see what kind of door you're trying to open here, but no - anything is game because to me a Flat Earther makes about as much sense as anything else bandied around here as cause du jour.
To me several posters here will make up any lie to prove their point or sway opinions (or just wag their finger and call other poster a bad person). I've seen people jump through impossible hoops to prove economic systems and ideas that are marked failures because they "feel" like it's right or because they heard it on NPR - not much different than any Flat Earther who would go about arguing their point.
Edit: Don't bother responding thejeff, what I posted was a view not an argument or debate.
Two sides will never ever agree about the things that divide us.
To quote a great man - "Lets have a War, The Enemy's within".
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[Ears perk up]
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The science of chemistry and physics coul......Sigh
Just out of idle curiosity, is there any topic where where you'd consider a "no debate" mentality appropriate? If we had a Flat Earther in here, for example?
If a FE adherent began discussing FET, wouldn't that be an implicit invitation for debate?
For that matter, isn't anything written in these Boards a kind of participatory dialogue? Otherwise, why post anything at all.
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From what I've heard from some of my colleagues in the field of environmental lobbying, there's still climate scientists who believe the Little Ice Age is "denialist propaganda," but who keep quiet on that belief because they have been told that viewpoint will get them blackballed in the climate science community.
As with the solar roadway issue, it might be a better idea to get information from the scientists and the archeologists in question, instead of political folks. The people who told you about this misunderstood what they read.
I sort of feel like we're moving from examples of PTL to examples of PPC. (Mostly just the promulgation, not the other two necessarily.)
Not trying to open any kind of door. Just trying to see where you're coming from.
I do however think science has figured somethings out to the point where it really isn't a matter of scientific debate. In those cases, it's reasonable to suspect the motives of those who still try to keep it open.
Which is an unscientific position.
Modern science is intentionally designed with the idea the debate is to never be closed. They get challenges, deal with the challenges by gathering evidence that refutes them or adjusting the theory, and move on. Science is intentionally designed this way to prevent it from going down the path of religion. So, as you can imagine, the idea of a true scientific consensus and that debate should stop because of it is not a healthy position for anyone to have in relation to science. It's the start of the slippery-slope.
If that position were held by science, things like plate tectonics would never have become accepted. Plus, as of late, climate science has suffered a lot of problems when things it thought were settled as the cause of something turned out not to be. For example, it turned out that Mount Kilimanjaro is not heating only, or primarily, because of climate change. If it were not for someone challenging the idea of it being climate change causing this, we would not have this data about how glaciers and forested land can interact... which, in turn, reflects on just how important plant life can be to ongoing climatic stability.
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If you don't want to participate in debate or dialogue:
-don't make contentious posts;
-don't be surprised when you drop a bomb, back off, see it explode; and don't be disingenuous about the whole process, e.g.:
'I didn't want to start an argument or participate in a debate, I just wanted to make a patently contentious statement and leave it at that. Can't we simply tell each other what we think and forgo all the opposing opinions? Don't we all prefer intellectual echo chambers over intellectual broadening and development?