Argument is war; thus forum becomes battle ground.

Who are you calling negative, punk?

I hardly ever gear up for battle with you guys. I usually wind up getting KO'd by the first punch anyways. Much more satisfying to wacth from the sidelines

On a more serious tone :

At a forum, we enter discussions. In a discussion, you formulate your own opinion, and bring it in the discussion. This opinion will usually conflict with several others. Thus others, in order to make their own point of view clear, have to respond by telling you where their theory differs from yours, and why their theory is better. This entails some negativity towards you.
Then comes a reply in kind, defending your theory, trying to point out fallacies in the logic of the person who just responded to your theory.

This seems like a quite natural way to have a reasonable discussion to me. However, ad hominis arguments, the kind that seem to spring up like wildfire in most forums, are anything but.
Saying: "Your theory is wrong, because you are a doodyface.", or something amongst such lines, seems quite childish to me, to be honest. Still, there are several factors that seem to favor precisely such statements:
a) relative anonimity, which leads to :
b) no fear of non-verbal reprisal (sticks and stones can break my bones, but words...)

Combine this with the fact that strong language is often (in my opinion, wrongly) equated with getting your point of view across, it will quickly lead to verbal combat.

Naj.

War comes out of the fact that we are all individuals, with our own thoughts and opinions. War will always exist, as long as there are individuals.

That seems like a strange analysis. I certainly hope you are wrong.

Coberst is whining because he comes here with what he sees as pearls of wisdom, and does not get the agreement he desires. He doesn't wish to discuss his propositions, he invites you to agree with him or be damned. Many here have attempted to discuss his propositions with him, but he doesn't brook dissent. So now, after a few years, he has reaped the harvest he has himself sewn, and complains about a hostility which he has bred from his unbending attitude.

coberst,

You are forgetting one thing. You don't engage and that is why you attract negative comments. All of your diatribe above is rationalization to yourself of that fact irrespective of your dressing it up in the language of your favorite texts.

Set, you pipped me to the post

coberst keeps things interesting, in my opinion, and presents ideas that can be talked about and debated (and are worth talking about and debating, usually.)

as far as i can tell, the descriptions of his reactions to those debates are being exaggerated here- i'm a bit of a coberst fan myself, but also a fresco fan, and a set fan. the fact that they don't appreciate each other amuses me, although i'd rather they got along.

the "fact" (i could always be wrong about him) that he doesn't appreciate the resulting debates doesn't stop me from enjoying them, so i appreciate that he keeps bringing them up.

as for someone that never, ever engages, go pick on busma? i dunno. carry on

I think Coberst's post, for the concept it conveyed, was valid enough - there are some people (and for others some times), when they do appear to be engaging in written war.

While I don't dispute the potential interest of the ideas raised by (some of) Coberst's posts, I agree that they almost never involve actual interaction. As has already been pointed out, getting Coberst to answer a direct question is like pulling teeth. The evidence speaks for itself. When he encounters even the slightest request for details to bolster his generalizations, he'll either ignore the question; or he'll resort to clichéd sallies at capitalism; or he'll answer the question he wished he'd been asked rather than the one he was asked; or he'll pretend that no such objections have been raised; or (my personal favorite) he'll try to convince himself that asking for evidence is an unreasonable request. In some cases he'll even try to defend his refusal to look at real evidence. Only once has he ever directly acknowledged a request of mine for some data to bolster his arguments... and and here was his answer.

Shapeless,

Applause is due for that research !

I'm sure I will get flamed for this, but... isn't there a lot of ad homine argumentation going on right now? While I'm sure that, if 3 well known posters zero in on a post with complaints about the poster, they probably have valid points to make, still, is this sort of reply the best way to have another person see their mistakes?
I think Set at least made a similar point years ago, when coberst started posting on this forum. It seems nothing much has changed...

i certainly won't be flaming you for it, being in complete agreement.

I wish to join Fresco in his applause of Shapeless--that was a wonderful response, and clearly makes the case about Coberst's inability to deal with dissent from his opinions. Quite frankly, i would not have considered Coberst worth the effort to have assembled such evidence, and i applaud the effort on the part of Shapeless for the assiduity it required, as well as its excellent relevance.

I don't pretend that I can convince Coberst of what I perceive to be his mistakes. I and countless others have been trying to do it for a long time, and I for one usually try to do it in an argumentative (rather than arguing) manner. Anyone is free to look at my past interactions with him and judge whether my comments rely on substantive argument or ad hominem attacks. By this point, I've given up. (It's only fair to point out one fleeting moment when I seemed to have made progress; but as you mentioned, not much has changed since then.) I've piped up here only to weigh in on the point Fresco raised about Coberst's willingness to engage in actual dialogue. I've presented examples so that people can assess whether I've mispresented the case. In all modesty, I don't think you can ask for much more in an intellectual conversation than that.

I agree that some of coberst's questions have been worthy of discussion, even though he fails to engage in such. As for the current question regarding "debate" and "warfare" this is hardly such a case. Coberst is obliged to rigidly cite Lakoff's (et al) "metaphor theory" when a much simpler path seems to lie with the implications of the celebrated observation of von Clausewitz.


It is this rigidity of coberst ....i.e. his limited breadth of reading resulting from his "self directed learning agenda"..... which precludes him as a candidate for general debate, and ironically negates his claim to be a "Critical Thinker".