I find the only thing NSG is good for is honing a very narrow argument. Law school is so hardcore into sourcing, you can't claim that **** stinks unless you back it up. So unless I'm just posting to annoy, I use it as an excuse to learn something about a topic, then take a stance, then back said stance up. More indepth attempts are met with a quick death...it doesn't seem that most posters are able to actually think about things beyond the purely surface. Hm, or are unwilling. All the real debates get sucked into the undertow of spam. I think I'm still here purely for nostalgia.
Yeah, it's kind of bummer. The last time I posted there, I discovered that it's apparently impossible to endorse a politician without tacitly supporting every bill he's ever written. I had the temerity to suggest that I thought the country ought to be moving more in Ron Paul's direction, and was called to defend all kinds of legislation on account. Someone brought up a bill he wrote, and the peanut gallery refused to believe I had any criticisms of it whatsoever. I attempted to make it abundantly clear that I would've worded it differently, but apparently my attempt met with little success. Evidently, supporting Ron Paul means I have to agree with everything he's ever written (to the word), which I found kind of silly. By and large, people in NSG don't seriously consider most arguments; preferring instead to attack the examples one may raise to support them. Instead of addressing the underlying ideas behind my posts, they never fail to attack them on the most superficial level possible. I haven't had a constructive debate in NSG since Deleuze was around.
Fair enough...I think you summed up NSG pretty well. Then again, if all the intelligent posters leave, what remains? Hope to see you upping the collective IQ level some time
I don't post in NSG anymore because whenever I do, people take the most insane extrapolations of my comments and never fail to either ignore or refuse to understand about 80% of what I write. I came back a few months ago but after arguing about a bill to limit the power of courts, the same crap started to happen. I spend a lot of time writing posts that people somehow think are refutable in three or four sentences. I just got the feeling that the wide majority of my content was being ignored. I'll probably wander back in at some point, but I think the days of regular debating are more or less over.
Why do you never post in General anymore? *weeps*
