Re: Proposed FAQ addition

Thomas Lindgren wrote:
zeborah@xxxxxxxxx (Zeborah) writes:

Thomas Lindgren <***********@*****.***> wrote:

David Friedman <ddfr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

And I have now read an interesting post there that is directly on topic
for this discussion, since it's about why people don't come to agreement:

http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/06/overcoming-disa.html?cid=118028264#
comment-118028264
In the spirit of Overcoming Bias:

Now that I ponder it a bit more, how about this: some beliefs need not
be verified because they are in essence just markers of, e.g.,
membership of a certain group. The membership is more important than
the actual belief itself. Furthermore, these membership signals often
concern impractical or abstract things with little impact on everyday
survival ("so tell me, did God create Jesus, the Son of God, or not?"
"umm ..."*). Seeking to prove or disprove the correctness of such
beliefs thus normally has little to gain and can even be actively
counterproductive.
Further discussion of this probably belongs with the rest of the thread
on rasfm.

Really? You think discussing in the abstract why people act the way
they do is beyond the charter of this group? You surprise me, but
perhaps you can explain your reasoning.


You may wish to Google on the "META: creating a sister group" thread for the rationale. Essentially, it is that tangentially on-topic and regularly acrimonious discussions were damaging the use of the group for its main purpose, i.e. helping people actually compose SF, and driving valued posters away. Therefore, in order that those inclined can still have the same discussions without unpleasant side-effects, we've adopted a new convention of taking such threads to r.a.sf.misc -- where they may, and should, go off in any direction the participants feel inclined. The suggested Googling will reveal a more than slightly broad base of support for the notion.

Originally we were just going to create a new group specifically for this purpose, but .misc seemed to have fallen into disuse, and nobody there objected. Since its charter fitted just fine with our purpose, we saved ourselves needless labour and ensured that the newsfeed would be generally carried from the get-go.

Part of the convention, which this thread began by being about fine-tuning for purposes of adding it to the FAQ, is that there are two ways we know a discussion is overheating enough to take into the next room:

1) The potential poster thinks it is, and does so;

or

2) At least one other party suggests this be done.

Inspecting the branches of this conversation which have already migrated to .misc may suggest why this request was made. Also, since this subject interests you, you will find a great deal more of it over there...

--
Cheers,

Gray

---
To unmung address, lop off the 'be invalid' command.
.

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