@maxdancona,
maxdancona wrote:
Yes, polite conversation does have a place. You can find quite a bit of it on Able2know.
You say that, but generally you insult me by questioning my education, etc.
It's fine, even good to disagree with people when you disagree, but it is rude to bring their background into question instead of discussing the topic at hand.
Formal educational institutions have degenerated into prisms that channel everyone into specialty degree programs and thus render them 'non-experts' in everything that they didn't specialize in.
In reality, everyone is a generalist who is, if they are a free intellectual, reading/listening/studying things published by a variety of sources and thinking critically about them.
When you go around undermining people in discussions by accusing them of lacking the credentials and educational background to discuss a topic, it is rude and undermines discussion.
When you don't feel you have the expertise OR critical thinking skills to address something someone said in a post, you can just say that instead of attacking them by accusing them of not having the background/education/expertise to discuss a subject.
Take a math example, since you are very comfortable with math: let's say you were having a discussion about exponential growth and someone didn't understand something you were saying, but instead of saying that they didn't recognize and/or understand the math you were talking about, they started asserting that your educational background was insufficient for you to be talking about the subject at all. The reality is that you might know what you were talking about and/or have reasons to say what you say, but instead of reasoning with you, the person keeps jabbing at your background and insisting none of your reasons can possibly be right on any level because you lack credentials.
Do you not see how rude and discussion-killing that is? If you want to have polite discussion, you have to respect that people have a right to think and provide reasoning in discussion and have those respected and responded to as such, and not just ignored in order to focus on what kind of educational background they do or don't have.